I heard Nicolas Maduro before I saw him. The jangle of his ankle shackles alerting a packed courtroom to the presence of the captured Venezuelan president right outside.
It was exactly midday on the 26th floor of the federal court in New York, with the large windows offering sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson river beyond.
Around 50 journalists, a few dozen members of the public and a handful of police officers from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the body responsible for building the case against him, waited in anticipation in the public gallery.
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Three days ago, Maduro had been enjoying the opulence of his palace in Caracas. Now he is facing the full force of the US justice system, going from president to defendant in one long weekend.
He was wearing prison-issued blue and orange clothes, and was brought into court by two US marshals. He made intense eye contact with certain people in the court, wishing them “Happy New Year” three or four times. He shook hands with the marshals and defence lawyers sitting on either side of him.
His wife, Cilia Flores, the former first lady who is also indicted, was in court with him, sitting two seats away from her husband. She appeared to have bruising on her right eye and was wearing a bandage.
Initial court hearings are often very procedural and bland, but this was anything but. Maduro took every opportunity to assert his innocence and insist he was still the president of Venezuela. When asked to confirm his identity, he told the judge he had been “captured” and “kidnapped,” before the judge interrupted him and asked him only to respond with his name.
Before the hearing started, the public gallery was warned by a court attendant to remain seated and silent for the duration of the hearing and not to attempt to speak to the defendant.
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But there was an astounding moment right at the end of the hearing. As Maduro was being shuffled out of the courtroom by the US marshals, a man wearing a suit in the public gallery stood up and began shouting at him in Spanish. They had a terse exchange, with Maduro staring down the man.
That man, I found out later, is 33-year-old Pedro Rojas, a Venezuelan in exile. I spoke with him outside court and he told me he’d been a political prisoner in Venezuela for four months in 2019 and was now living in the US state of Georgia.
“I told Nicolas Maduro Moros that he will pay,” he told me. “That the United States of America will bring him to justice. That starting today, 5 January 2026, the golden age of Venezuela begins.
“Nicolas Maduro told me that he was innocent and that he was a man of God. I told him that we are also men of God, because we have never attacked the Venezuelan Church, as he has done on numerous occasions.”
After the hearing concluded, Maduro, in a motorcade, was taken back to prison. His next hearing set for March. The consequences of his capture, unknown.
