The only son of captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro called on his countrymen to take to the streets of Caracas to protest his father’s arrest, warning that those who betrayed his family will be found.
The response, though, was muted — with some armed and masked paramilitaries reportedly seen on the streets of Caracas on Monday.
Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra, 35, who was also indicted by the US alongside his father and mother in 2020, remained defiant on Sunday as he claimed that he will do whatever possible to free his parents and oppose US-backed rule in Venezuela.
“You will see us in the streets. You will see a united people. You will see us wave the flags of dignity,” Maduro Guerra said in a fiery message, according to El Pais.
“They want to see us weak, but they won’t see us that way,” he added. “…I swear on my life , I swear on my dad, I swear on Cilia, that we’re going to get out of this mess.”
The son of the captured dictator also issued a stark warning to anyone who betrayed his family and leaked the location of his father, saying that it was only a matter of time until the traitors are revealed.
Maduro Guerra, who serves in Venezuela’s National Assembly, is one of several officials still in the country who face US charges over their alleged connections to international drug trafficking operations and money laundering.
Other prominent leaders include Venezuela’s minister of defense, interior minister, and its former chief justice and vice president for the economy.
Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra
Maduro Guerra, who is known as “The Prince,” was appointed by his father to serve as “Head of the Corps of Special Inspectors of the Presidency” shortly after the elder Maduro came into power in 2013.
Maduro Guerra has been charged with conspiracy to import cocaine and conspiracy to possess machine guns, according to court documents unsealed on Saturday.
The Department of Justice also alleges that the younger Maduro partnered with narcotics traffickers and narco-terrorist groups that dispatched cocaine shipments to the US, which President Trump claimed killed 300,000 people a year.
In 2017 alone, Maduro Guerra allegedly shipped hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Venezuela to Miami, Florida, by shipping containers.
Vladimir Padrino Lopez
Vladimir Padrino Lopez, 62, serves as the Minister of Defense for Venezuela, a position he’s held for more than a decade.
Lopez was indicted under the first Trump administration, which claimed that from 2014 to 2019, the Venezuelan general conspired with others to distribute cocaine on board an aircraft registered in the US.
Rather than crackdown on the illegal drug trade occurring in the country, the DOJ claimed Lopez accepted bribes from cartel groups to look the other way and guarantee their safe travel in Venezuelan airspace.
Diosdado Cabello Rondón
Diosdado Cabello Rondón, 62, is the current Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace for Venezuela and had served as the former head of the country’s National Assembly.
He was charged alongside Maduro in 2020 with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, and weapons charges related to narco-terrorism.
The DOJ claims that since 1999, Rondón, Maduro and their other associates had managed and coordinated cartel groups to ship illicit drugs into the US.
Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah
Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah, 51, was Venezuela’s vice president for the economy, with the former official put on ICE’s most wanted list for international narcotics trafficking and money laundering in 2019.
Maddah is accused of taking money to facilitate drug shipments for imprisoned drug kingpin Walid Makled Garcia.
Maddah was also allegedly linked to drug shipments for the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel, as well as protection services provided to Colombian drug lord Daniel Barrera Barrera and Venezuelan drug trafficker Hermagoras Gonzalez Polanco
Maikel Jose Moreno Perez
Maikel Jose Moreno Perez, 60, a prominent lawyer who previously served as Venezuela’s Chief of Justice, stands accused of laundering millions and accepting exuberant bribes to fix dozens of civil and criminal cases in the country.
Perez is accused of authorizing the seizure and sale of a General Motors auto plant estimated at a value of $100 million in exchange for personal profit, as well as dismissing a multibillion-dollar fraud charge against a state-owned oil company.
