Maduro Seeks To Have U.S. Trial Tossed Out Due To Not Being Allowed To Use State Funds To Pay For His Defense

The defense team of Venezuela's former authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, requested for the trial against him be tossed out due to not being able to use state funds to pay for the legal team he and his wife Cilia Flores want to hire.

Maduro's current team claimed that the U.S. prosecutor's office acknowledged that under Venezuelan law they are entitled to use state funds to pay for their defense.

However, OFAC has blocked the use of such funds, preventing Maduro and his wife to hire the legal team they want. The measure, they say, also violates the U.S.'s Sixth Amendment, which grants defendants the right to choose a lawyer. They are now being represented by a public defender. As a result, the defense argued, the case should be dismissed.

Prosecutors argued against allowing the use of state funds, saying Maduro and Flores "surely knew that the U.S. Government did not consider them to hold legitimate positions."

Maduro and Flores were captured on January 3 in a U.S. operation on the military compound in which they lived in Caracas. A recent report detailed that Maduro complains about being mistreated from his small cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Spanish outlet ABC quoted Sam Mangel, a prison consultant who knows about the facility based on conversations with inmates, who claimed that "no one would like to spend a minute" there.

Maduro, the outlet added, is kept at a special housing unit, where he is in isolation. He is allowed out three times a week for an hour in shackles and escorted by two guards. There, he can shower, use the phone, access email or go out to a small outdoor patio.

Elsewhere, ABC said that the lawyer of another Venezuelan inmate who is being held close to Maduro said he has heard him call for help at night. "I am the President of Venezuela, tell my country I've been kidnapped. Tell my country we're being mistreated here," he has reportedly said.

Prison authorities refused to provide details of Maduro's imprisonment, telling the outlet that "due to security and privacy reasons, the Bureau of Prisons does not reveal the conditions of confinement of any inmates under its custody."