What’s next in deposed Venezuela leader Nicolás Maduro’s criminal case

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Nicolás Maduro’s first court hearing in the U.S. — a spectacle where he proclaimed he is still Venezuela’s president — was merely the beginning of a legal odyssey that could keep him locked up and out of power for years, maybe even the rest of his life.

The deposed South American leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arraigned Monday on drug trafficking charges, days after U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a stunning middle-of-the-night raid. Both pleaded not guilty.

President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the military action as a “surgical law enforcement operation” to apprehend Maduro in a criminal case that U.S. prosecutors first brought six years ago. In court, Maduro called it a kidnapping and declared himself a prisoner of war.

While Venezuela reckons with the geopolitical fallout, Maduro and Flores are locked up in New York City, about 2,1...