US captures Venezuela’s leader and wife and plans to prosecute them

The US captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and flew him out of the country in a stunning military operation that plucked a sitting leader from office.

The operation on Saturday was the culmination of months of escalating Trump administration pressure on the oil-rich South American nation.

Mr Maduro and his wife, taken overnight from their home on a military base, were aboard a US warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges.

President Donald Trump said the US planned to run Venezuela until a transition of power can take place.

He claimed the American presence was already in place, though there were no immediate signs that the US was running the country.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Mr Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives”.

Venezuelan state TV broadcast live images of small groups of Maduro supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.

The legal authority for the attack, which echoed the 1990 US invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, was not immediately clear.

The US government does not recognise Mr Maduro, who last appeared on state television on Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.

Mr Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, but the US justice department released a new indictment on Saturday of Mr Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.

US attorney general Pam Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts”.

Mr Trump said the couple were aboard the US warship Iwo Jima and headed to New York.

Mr Trump, who was set to speak on Saturday morning, posted on his Truth Social account a photo of Mr Maduro blindfolded and in a sweatsuit aboard the ship.

Early on Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital.

Mr Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.

The attack lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they had seen and heard.

Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said vice president Delcy Rodriguez, without giving a number.

Mr Trump said some US forces were injured in Venezuela but he believed none were killed.

Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernandez told The Associated Press that Mr Maduro and Ms Flores were at their home within the Ft Tiuna military installation when they were captured.

“That’s where they bombed,” he said. “And, there, they carried out what we could call a kidnapping of the president and the first lady of the country.”

Under Venezuelan law, Ms Rodriguez would take over from Maduro.

There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike, demanding proof of life for Mr Maduro and his wife.

The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major build-up of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs.

Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began strikes in September.

As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration.

Mr Trump said that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the US.

Mr Maduro has decried the US military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.

Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Mr Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.

Mr Maduro took over when Mr Chavez died in 2013.

His 2018 re-election was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating.

During the 2024 election, ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

In a demonstration of how polarising a figure Mr Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to deplore his capture and celebrate it.

Earlier, armed people and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighbourhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party.

In other parts of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack, as residents absorbed events.

Some areas remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.

Cuba, a supporter of the Maduro government and a long-time adversary of the United States, called for the international community to respond to what President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez called “the criminal attack”.

“Our zone of peace is being brutally assaulted,” he said on X.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes.

President Javier Milei of Argentina praised the claim by his close ally, Mr Trump, that Mr Maduro had been captured with a political slogan he often deploys to celebrate right-wing advances: “Long live freedom, dammit!”