Human Rights and Global Wrongs

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U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein refused to dismiss drug trafficking charges against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores on March 26, even though the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is blocking funds for their legal defense, in violation of the Sixth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

But Hellerstein reserved the right to revisit the issue in the future if he determines that OFAC is arbitrarily obstructing the money for Maduro’s counsel of choice.

Venezuelan law provides for the payment of legal fees for the president and first lady. But OFAC issued — then three hours later retracted — a license to Venezuela that would allow the country to circumvent U.S. sanctions and pay for their defense.

“As a result [of the sanctions], counsel cannot provide a legal defense to Mr. Maduro or receive funds from the government of Venezuela to do so without first obtaining a specific license from OFAC,” Barry Pollack, Maduro’s defense attorney, wrote in the motion to dismiss the indictment.

Maduro and Flores have been in custody in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since January 3, when U.S. forces illegally kidnapped them from Venezuela and transported them to New York, while killing approximately 100 people. The indictment charges that Maduro, Flores, and other members of the Maduro government committed narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S.

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“After invading another country and forcibly bringing its sovereign head of state to the United States, the government of the United States is now actively preventing him from retaining counsel of his choice and receiving a fair defense in this Court, in violation of his Sixth Amendment and Due Process rights,” Pollack wrote.

“The U.S. government has unlawfully interfered with President Maduro’s Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel by revoking the OFAC license that allowed for payment of legal services,” National Lawyers Guild President Suzanne Adely told........

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