A tense calm hangs over Venezuela after a US military operation led to President Nicolas Maduro being taken and “jailed” in New York ahead of facing criminal charges. Maduro and his wife landed late on Saturday afternoon at a small airport in New York. The couple faced US charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
US President Donald Trump said the US would “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. As things stood, here were the five latest updates as reported by American media:
1. Maduro’s whereabouts: The Brooklyn jail was holding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The Associated Press reported that, in the past, some judges had refused to send people there, even as it had housed such famous inmates as music stars R. Kelly and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Opened in the early 1990s, the Metropolitan Detention Centre, or MDC Brooklyn, currently housed about 1,300 inmates, the news agency added. Maduro was not the first president of a country to be locked up there. Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was imprisoned at MDC Brooklyn while he was on trial for trafficking hundreds of tonnes of cocaine into the US, before being convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
2. Trump wants the Venezuelan VP to lead or get out of the way: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said President Donald Trump’s conversations with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez were very matter-of-fact and very clear: You can lead or you can get out of the way, because we’re not going to allow you to continue to subvert American influence and our need to have a free country like Venezuela to work with, rather than to have dictators in place who perpetuate crimes and drug trafficking. Noem reportedly told Fox News Sunday that the United States wanted a leader in Venezuela who would be a partner and who understood that the US was going to protect America when it came to stopping drug trafficking and terrorists from coming into the country.
3. Rubio says the US will use control of Venezuela’s oil to influence policy: Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to back off from Trump’s assertions that the US was running Venezuela, insisting instead that Washington would use control of the South American country’s oil industry to force policy changes. “We expected that it was going to lead to results here. We were hopeful that it would have positive results for the people of Venezuela,” Rubio told ABC’s This Week. “But, ultimately, most importantly, it was in the national interest of the United States.”
4. Rubio on Cuba: Stopping short of saying Cuba could be the next target, Rubio called the Cuban government “a huge problem” and said that Cubans were in charge of Nicolas Maduro’s security before his capture. “I think they’re in a lot of trouble, yes,” Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press. “I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be and what our policies are going to be right now in this regard, but I don’t think it’s any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime.”
5. Rubio on consequences: No Americans were killed and no equipment was lost during the operation to seize Maduro, the US Secretary of State said. The people who were in charge of Caracas at the time could be expected to “be a lot more compliant than Maduro was”, he was quoted as saying by CNN.
