Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, who dined on steak and lived in a palace as his country starved, is now in “hell on Earth’’ in a Brooklyn jail — and machine-gun-toting authorities are making sure he stays there.
Maduro, 63, and his 69-year-old fellow-inmate wife Cilia were thrown into separate cells in solitary confinement away from the general population at the infamous federal Metropolitan Detention Center since their extraordinary capture by elite US forces in Caracas early Saturday.
“The worst prison in the United States is a mansion compared to the prisons and holes where people have been tortured for years in Venezuela. So this is the least they deserve,” said Gabriel Bonilla, a Venezuelan comedian who fled to Argentina in 2017, to The Post on Sunday, referring to the Maduros.
At least four heavily armored law-enforcement members draped in military gear and toting M4 machine guns patrolled the streets outside the MDC on Sunday as about an extra dozen cops milled around along with protesters both for and against the accused narco trafficker.
Maduro is set to be hauled to Manhattan federal court for his arraignment at noon Monday — and authorities could end up closing down the Brooklyn Bridge to make sure they get him there without incident, as they did with Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo’’ Guzman.
Brooklyn’s behind-bars federal digs — which have housed everyone from Guzman to late powerful sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, fallen music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and accused healthcare-CEO-killer Luigi Mangione — are a far cry from the lavish lifestyle the brutal dictator enjoyed during his cruel iron-fisted rule.
Maduro — who lived in Venezuela’s opulent presidential palace and famously publicly chomped on a gourmet steak dinner in Istanbul in 2018, infuriating his struggling countrymen — will be waiting for trial in a joint once sued over its alleged maggot-infested food, dirty cells and frequent power outages.
The Sunset Park facility has long been so problematic that some judges have even refused to send suspects there for holding.
“The Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn is a facility notorious for its dangerous conditions,” the Legal Aid Society said in a press release in June.
“Over the years, MDC has become synonymous with egregious neglect and abuse with the people incarcerated there having to suffer heating blackouts during winter, been served maggot-infested food, denied adequate medical care — including botched cancer diagnoses — and suffered fatal violence due to chronic understaffing,” the public defenders firm said.
The federal detention facility was previously sued by the Federal Defenders of New York for “inhumane” conditions and been the subject of reports that it is understaffed and poorly maintained.
An embarrassing mishap in 2019 left inmates without heat or power for a week over the winter.
