Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday stood defiant in the face of a US$15 million bounty issued by the US for him to face drug trafficking charges, calling US President Donald Trump a “racist cowboy,” and warning that he is ready to fight by whatever means necessary should the US and Colombia dare to invade.
Maduro’s bellicose remarks came hours after the US announced sweeping indictments against him and several members of his inner circle, for allegedly converting Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups.
One indictment by prosecutors in New York accused Maduro and Venezuela Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello of conspiring with Colombian rebels and members of the military “to flood the United States with cocaine,” and use the drug trade as a “weapon against America.”
Photo: AFP / Venezuelan Presidency / Jhonn Zerpa
The charges are politically motivated, Maduro said, adding that they ignore Colombia’s role as the main source of the world’s cocaine, and his own role in facilitating peace talks between the Colombian government and that nation’s rebels over the past decade.
“Donald Trump, you are a miserable human being,” Maduro said during a televised address. “You manage international relations like the New York mafia extortion artist you once were as a real-estate boss.”
What was some of Maduro’s most venomous rhetoric against Trump also came with a threat of military force.
“If one day the imperialists and Colombian oligarchy dare to touch even a single hair, they will face the Bolivarian fury of an entire nation that will wipe them all out,” he said.
Earlier, Venezuela’s head prosecutor opened an investigation into opposition leader and National Assembly President Juan Guaido for allegedly plotting a coup with retired army general Cliver Alcala, who after being named in the US indictments said that he had stockpiled assault weapons in Colombia for a cross-border incursion.
Without offering evidence, Maduro said that the US Drug Enforcement Administration was behind a plan by Alcala to assassinate him and other political leaders.
The indictment of a functioning head of state is highly unusual and is likely to ratchet up tensions with Washington as the spread of COVID-19 threatens to collapse Venezuela’s shortage-plagued healthcare system.
Maduro has ordered people to stay home in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which officials say has infected 107 people and claimed its first death on Thursday.
Criminal acts to advance a drug and weapons conspiracy that date back to the start of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s revolution in 1999 occurred as far afield as Syria, Mexico, Honduras and Iran, the indictment alleges.
US Attorney General William Barr estimated that the conspiracy helped smuggle as much as 250 tonnes of cocaine a year out of South America.
“The Maduro regime is awash in corruption and criminality,” Barr said at an online news conference in Washington. “While the Venezuelan people suffer, this cabal lines their pockets with drug money, and the proceeds of their corruption, and this has to come to an end.”
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