The capture of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores by U.S. forces placed Venezuela at the centre of international attention. The debate has focused on international law and the sovereignty of peoples, leaving aside the crimes in which the Chávez and the Maduro regimes would be involved.
“For the world, this is a complicated piece of news because it implies, in a way, the failure of the mechanisms and instances of conflict resolution offered by international law,” explains Paola de Alemán, doctor in political science and director of the Institute of Political Studies Forma, Venezuela. “The question is not why Donald Trump acted this way, but why a person like Maduro remained in power before the complicit gaze of everyone,” she emphasizes.
Narcoterrorism: a continuity of evidence
The action executed on January 3 by U.S. forces was preceded by a formal accusation presented before a federal court in New York. President Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and other Venezuelans high officials face charges of conspiracy to traffic cocaine into the United States, of narco-terrorist conspiracy and of conspiracy to use and possess automatic weapons.
His possible link with criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel or the Tren de Aragua is highlighted in the charges, as well as his connection with “proven and previously prosecuted schemes”, says Venezuelan journalist and activist Luis Carlos Díaz. He recalls a judicial precedent before a court in New York: the trial of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life in 2019, that included abundant evidence on narco-criminal logistics.
That continuity of evidence and the fact that the United States considered Maduro an illegitimate president after the elections of July 28, 2024, explain why the case moved quickly to the pre-trial stage, where it is defined what evidence will reach the courtroom.
The removal of the accusation that he was heading the Cartel of the Suns has reached public opinion. The original 2020 accusation included that characterization, but the version presented in 2026 eliminated it. Not because “the cartel does not exist,” clarifies Díaz, who has been following the justice and transition processes of Venezuela for years, but because it was not efficient for this trial. “You do not accuse someone for belonging to a cartel, but for the crimes you commit by being part of it,” he summarizes.
If there is no agreement between Maduro and the State, that accuses him, the trial will continue before a jury; if there is a conviction, there will come the sentencing and eventual appeal before a higher federal court. None of this depends on the political outcome in Caracas.
From narco to crimes against humanity
In The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), for its part, investigates crimes against humanity such as arbitrary detentions, torture and other generalized abuses linked to state repression in 2014 and 2017. The “Situation of Venezuela I” passed the preliminary examination that evaluated the competence of the Court and is in the investigation phase.
“The Court not only focuses on whether the crimes occurred or not, it determines who gave the orders, who has the highest responsibilities in these crimes,” indicates Díaz.
The Venezuelan State has shown gestures of cooperation, but it has become clear that its ultimate purpose was to slow down the process. Caracas also submitted a “Situation Venezuela II” before the Hague court to investigate U.S. sanctions, but the request is still in preliminary examination.
In the investigation phase, the ICC must find one or more concrete cases where the chain of decisions that led to the execution of these crimes can be demonstrated. Once the Prosecutor’s Office assembles that puzzle, arrest warrants would then come.
“There is a possibility that warrants already exist but are sealed,” explains Díaz. This may be a strategy that opts to give them to intelligence agencies instead of making them public. “It is not to protect the criminals, it is rather to catch them,” he continues.
What lies ahead is the most decisive stretch of the process: the capture or surrender of the accused, the confirmation of charges hearing and, if those thresholds are surpassed, the trial, the sentencing, the appeals and the reparations to victims.
Precisely these reparations measures make it so different from the process that takes place in the United States. While that prosecution pursues crimes that affect its national security and seeks punishment, The Hague investigates crimes that affect victims of a community and may order reparations. This is key because it opens a step towards transitional justice: which includes recognition, memory and guarantees of non-repetition, not just punishment.
Argentina: what else can it do?
The third judicial front occurs in Argentina and has a particularity: it arose from two different initiatives that finally converged into a single case.
First, on January 18, 2023, the Argentine Forum for the Defense of Democracy (FADD) filed a criminal complaint with the Argentine Federal Court against Nicolás Maduro for crimes such as torture and political persecution in Venezuela. The case was expedited because Maduro was planning a trip to Buenos Aires, and in September 2024, the court issued an arrest warrant for the president, generating media headlines and leading him to cancel his visit. It was one of the first symbolic victories for victims in the international arena, recalls Díaz.
In June 2023, the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) filed a complaint in Argentina focused exclusively on extrajudicial killings as crimes against humanity. It does not cover torture or arbitrary detentions, crimes already included in the previous complaint and which are also part of the case before the ICC.
The Argentine judges decided to unite both cases into one under the principle of universal jurisdiction and have already completed the investigation, issued more than a dozen arrest warrants, and triggered a request for the extradition of Maduro.
For Díaz, this “is probably the most advanced case in the history of Argentina under universal jurisdiction, and the one that has achieved the most in concrete terms for Venezuelan victims.” Díaz highlights that it does not compete with the ICC but complements it, because it speaks of other crimes and adds new responsible parties to the list.
Three political scenarios in the face of the unprecedented
The capture of Maduro generates concern regarding what will come next and for de Alemán it is too early to give a balance. However, she does see three possible political scenarios, some more probable than others.
The first is that of a dictatorship tutored by a foreign force, where Delcy Rodríguez governs under U.S. supervision and makes economic reforms without real political opening. This path could stabilize the country, but in no way would it lead to a democracy, she says.
De Alemán views the viability of this scenario with suspicion for two reasons: the corruption networks that exist inside the regime “which are so corrosive and demand so much revenue, that they are incompatible with economic development”; and the political cost for President Donald Trump. If it is already complicated to explain what happened on January 3, how would he explain that it did not lead to a democracy that respects the will of the people, she adds.
A second scenario would be that of a somewhat more open authoritarianism, where chavismo once again participates and wins elections after improving economic conditions and releasing certain political valves. “We return a bit to chavismo before 2013,” de Alemán describes, with a system where electoral competition exists but power remains concentrated in the same hands.
The third scenario is the one that would indeed enable a democratic transition: the opening of an electoral process with guarantees, release of prisoners, return of exiles and reactivation of civic life. This, in her opinion, is the only scenario in which the judicial processes that are currently initiated could move towards true transitional justice.
“In Venezuela the suffering has been such and so much that when a window of oxygen opens in which Venezuelans are going to be able to tell everything that we have suffered, that will be an avalanche of thirst for justice and the political and legal institutions of our country and of the international community will have to find the way to process it,” she says.
In that context, the cases in the United States, The Hague and Argentina would not compete among themselves, she says, but would operate in a complementary way: one attributing individual responsibilities for drug trafficking, another establishing superior responsibility and reparations to victims of crimes against humanity, and the third documenting and prosecuting other crimes such as extrajudicial executions and political persecution.
At this point, it is difficult to look to the future with certainty, analysts say. Only ten days have passed, and the information coming from Washington still does not show what the Venezuelan opposition’s integration into this process will be, or if it will exist at all. The political transition will depend on many factors, and there is still a long way to go before even considering domestic justice.
