Ex-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says new torture allegations are ‘false’

For­mer Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in­sist­ed in court on Thurs­day that new­ly un­sealed tor­ture al­le­ga­tions against him and his wife were “false ac­cu­sa­tions.”

Maduro and Cil­ia Flo­res, both shack­led at the an­kles, were brought to court to face a rewrit­ten in­dict­ment that ex­pands from an ini­tial set of drug traf­fick­ing charges to ac­cuse them of lead­ing a state-spon­sored re­pres­sion cam­paign that tor­tured scores of vic­tims, in­clud­ing three Amer­i­cans.

Maduro twice de­fied a judge’s re­quest that he en­ter a plea to the charges, in­stead con­demn­ing them through a court­room in­ter­preter as “false ac­cu­sa­tions and false tes­ti­mo­ny.” Irked, Judge Alvin K. Heller­stein took mat­ters in­to his own hands, in­ter­ject­ing that “a plea of not guilty will be en­tered on be­half of Mr. Maduro.”