Ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro urged a US judge on Wednesday to dismiss criminal drug trafficking charges against him, arguing he should be immune from prosecution as the head of a sovereign country.
The charges, filed in Manhattan federal court, formed the basis for the US military’s raid on Caracas and capture of Maduro on January 3. The Venezuelan leader, who has been held in a Brooklyn federal jail since his seizure, has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial on June 1, 2027, if his effort to dismiss the case is unsuccessful.
The principle that sitting heads of state are immune from prosecution abroad is a long-standing tenet of international law seen as fundamental to diplomacy. Maduro’s push to persuade Manhattan-based US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to dismiss the case will test US courts’ general reluctance to apply international law in criminal cases.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, made the assertion of immunity in a motion to dismiss Maduro’s indictment. Hellerstein had given Pollack a deadline of Wednesday to file the motion.
Pollack said Hellerstein lacked jurisdiction both because sovereign heads of state enjoyed complete immunity and because the acts that Maduro is accused of would have been part of his official duties.
“This unprecedented prosecution violates the absolute immunity from criminal jurisdiction to which heads of state and foreign officials acting in their official capacities have been entitled for hundreds of years,” Pollack wrote.