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A retired Venezuelan army general indicted alongside Nicolás Maduro has surrendered in Colombia and is being taken by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to New York for arraignment, four people familiar with the situation said Friday. Cliver Alcalá has been an outspoken critic of Maduro for years. But he was charged Thursday with allegedly running with Maduro, socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello and another retired army general a narcoterrorist conspiracy that U.S. prosecutors say sent 250 metric tons of cocaine a year to the U.S. and turned the Venezuelan state into a platform for violent cartels and Colombia rebels. The Justice...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The U.S. has opened up secret communications with Venezuela’s socialist party boss as members of President Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle seek guarantees they won’t face retribution if they cede to growing demands to remove him, a senior U.S. administration official has told The Associated Press. Diosdado Cabello, who is considered the most-powerful man in Venezuela after Maduro, met last month in Caracas with someone who is in close contact with the Trump administration, said the official. A second meeting is in the works but has not yet taken place. The AP is withholding the intermediary’s name...

MIAMI -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro stood defiant in the face of a $15 million bounty by the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges, calling Donald Trump a "racist cowboy" and warning that he is ready to fight by whatever means necessary should the U.S. and neighboring Colombia dare to invade. Maduro's bellicose remarks Thursday night came hours after the U.S. announced sweeping indictments against the socialist leader 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...

In a stunning announcement amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Justice Department plans to announce Thursday that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and other government officials have been charged with turning Venezuela into a narco-state by collaborating with a leftist Colombian guerrilla group that exported tons of cocaine to the United States. An indictment, to be unveiled at a “virtual” news conference in Washington, D.C., accuses Maduro and other top officials in his socialist regime of conspiring with the U.S.-designated terrorist group known as the FARC so that Venezuela could be used for narcotics shipments to finance a long-running civil war against...

Merida, April 3, 2019 – Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly (ANC) has lifted the parliamentary immunity of the self-declared “Interim President” Juan Guaido, opening the door for criminal charges to be brought against him. Tuesday’s unanimous decision came following a request from the Supreme Court, and included the “authorisation” of the continuation of investigations into the also deputy and president of the National Assembly. “The investigation [against Guaido] is formally authorised to continue in accordance with our Constitution and laws” said ANC President Diosdado Cabello during the session. Cabello added that justice was “necessary” and what would safeguard peace in Venezuela....

One of Venezuela’s most powerful leaders may have put out an order to kill Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a fervent critic of the South American country’s government, according to intelligence obtained by the U.S. last month. Though federal authorities couldn’t be sure at the time if the uncorroborated threat was real, they took it seriously enough that Rubio has been guarded by a security detail for several weeks in both Washington and Miami. Believed to be behind the order: Diosdado Cabello, the influential former military chief and lawmaker from the ruling socialist party who has publicly feuded with Rubio. At...

Shortly after Hugo Chávez won his first election as Venezuelan president in December 1998, a lawyer from the western state of Barinas, which was then governed by Chávez's father, delivered a prescient warning to Newsweek magazine: "Venezuelans are dreaming of a savior, but Chávez is a dictator. People don't know what they are getting."  More than 14 years later, a cancer-stricken Chávez is reportedly near death, but his autocratic legacy is very much alive. Venezuela long ago ceased to be a real democracy: The ruling regime effectively controls the Supreme Court (which in 2004 was expanded and packed with Chávez allies), the National Assembly...

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- When the Organization of American States asked its press freedom expert, Santiago Canton, to report on the state of the independent press in Venezuela, they must have known it was a sensitive mission. President Hugo Chavez's radical populist government does not take kindly to criticism nor does it appreciate outside scrutiny of its internal affairs. It's doubtful, though, that anyone at the OAS expected Canton to fall victim himself to the kind of tactics the Venezuelan press faces every day. Just moments after beginning the final press conference of his four-day visit to ...