US captures Venezuela's leader, his wife in stunning operation, plans to prosecute them

Caracas(Venezuela): The United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and flew him out of the country in an extraordinary military operation early Saturday that plucked a sitting leader from office.

President Donald Trump insisted the US government would run the country at least temporarily and would tap Venezuelan's vast oil reserves to sell “large amounts” to other countries.

The action marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American country that consisted of months of strikes on boats officials said were smuggling drugs to the US.

Behind the scenes, US officials tracked Maduro's behavioral habits, including what he ate and where he slept, in preparing to execute an operation that resulted in one of the more stunning regime changes in modern history.

Maduro and his wife, seized 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 in connection with a Justice Department indictment accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.

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 the US was running the country. Venezuelan state TV continued to air pro-Maduro propaganda, broadcasting live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.

“We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” 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.”

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 Maduro, who last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, but the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores that described the regime as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fuelled by a drug trafficking operation that flooded the US with cocaine.

Trump posted on his Truth Social account a photo that he said showed Maduro in custody, including blindfolded and in a sweatsuit.

Early morning attack

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Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital. 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'd seen and heard.

Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, without giving a number. Trump said some US forces were injured in Venezuela but none were killed.

“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again, and again. Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong,” said Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.

Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.

Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernandez told The Associated Press that Maduro and 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, 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 Maduro and his wife.

The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup 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. 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.

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

Some streets in Caracas fill up

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

Maduro took over when Chavez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection 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 Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to deplore his capture and celebrate it.

At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas Mayor Carmen Melendez joined a crowd demanding Maduro's return.

“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here Nicolas Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”

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.

“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking down at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared, many families couldn't sleep.”

In the Chilean capital of Santiago, people waved Venezuelan flags and banging pots and pans as vehicles passed by honking at them.

In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the US, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”

Questions of legality

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The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat-out objections to the US attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling near the Venezuelan coast and Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on "its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the military action and seizure of Maduro marks “a new dawn for Venezuela,” saying that “the tyrant is gone.” He posted on X hours after the strike. His boss, Rubio, reposted a post from July that said Maduro “is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government.”

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

“Our zone of peace is being brutally assaulted,” he said on X. Iran's Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes.