The United States agreed to modify its sanctions against Venezuela to allow the government of the South American country to pay Nicolás Maduro’s defense lawyer, backing down on a restriction that threatened to harm the drug trafficking case against the former Venezuelan president, as shown in a court document released on Friday (24).
Arrested since January 3
Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, were captured at their home in Caracas by US special forces on January 3 and taken to New York to face criminal charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy. They have pleaded not guilty and are being held in Brooklyn awaiting trial.
In February, Maduro’s attorney, Barry Pollack, asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of Manhattan to dismiss the case, claiming that U.S. sanctions were preventing the Venezuelan government from paying his legal fees.
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Pollack stated that this ban amounted to a violation of Maduro’s right to legal assistance of his choice, guaranteed by the US Constitution.
Neither Maduro nor Flores are in a position to hire lawyers on their own, and the Venezuelan government is willing to cover the fees, their lawyers said.
All defendants in U.S. criminal cases have constitutional rights, regardless of whether or not they are U.S. citizens.
Hellerstein said at a March 26 court hearing that he did not intend to dismiss the case, but expressed skepticism about the government’s justification for blocking the payments.
National security
Prosecutor Kyle Wirshba stated in court that the American sanctions blocking the payments were based on legitimate national security and foreign policy interests. Wirshba also said that Hellerstein could not order the Treasury Department to modify sanctions because foreign policy is the responsibility of the Executive Branch, not the Judiciary.
Hellerstein noted that the US had relaxed sanctions against Venezuela since Maduro’s ouster. Relations between Caracas and Washington have improved since Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, assumed interim leadership of Venezuela.
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‘The defendant is here, Flores is here. They no longer pose any threat to national security,’ said Hellerstein, a judge appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton. ‘The right that is in question, primordial in relation to other rights, is the right to constitutional legal assistance.’
Sanctions against Venezuela
During his first term in the White House, US President Donald Trump intensified sanctions against Venezuela on the grounds that Maduro’s government was corrupt and undermining democratic institutions. Washington considered Maduro’s re-election in 2018 fraudulent.
Maduro dismissed those accusations, along with allegations of his participation in drug trafficking, as pretextual justifications for what he called the U.S. desire to take control of the OPEC-member South American nation’s vast oil reserves.
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