APPEARING in a US federal courtroom for arraignment in Manhattan yesterday, captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro declared that he had been kidnapped, and that he was an innocent man who was being held as a “prisoner of war”.

Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to the four counts laid against them in a US indictment that was released on Saturday moments after he and Flores were plucked from their Caracas compound inside Fuerte Tuina by US forces.

The indictment, which followed a vast military build-up in the Caribbean that began last August as well numerous lethal boat strikes carried out by the US that have killed more than 100, accused Maduro, Flores and other Venezuelan officials of being complicit in “narco-terrorism” and the transportation of drugs and weaponry to the United States.