Electric shocks, beatings: Maduro and wife accused of torture conspiracy

Nicolás Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, and his wife Cilia Flores have been in custody in New York since January, facing drug trafficking charges. They now also face allegations of human rights abuses, specifically a conspiracy to commit torture.

The US authorities have accused them of presiding over a system of repression that relied on violence against the political opposition, arbitrary detention, and torture of detainees, including US citizens. The alleged torture methods included electric shock, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation, punishment cells, and psychological torture, according to the BBC News.

Maduro and Flores were taken into custody by US forces in a pre-dawn raid on their Caracas home in January. They are being held in a detention centre in Brooklyn. The new charges are in addition to the existing drug-trafficking and weapons charges they have denied.

Brief written by urgent.news from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, NPR, ABC News AU, BBC News — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.