HOURS after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power a n d r e m o v e d him from the country, President Donald Trump said that the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American nation and its autocratic leader and months of secret planning resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts immediately raised questions about whether the operation was lawful.

 

Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez demanded in a speech that the US free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader, before Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim President. Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’soil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

 

Maduro has been locked in a notorious federal jail in New York after his capture by the US forces at a military base in his country, from where he had been taunting President Donald Trump. As he was escorted into the local office of the DEA on Saturday night before being jailed, he said sarcastically, looking at the camera, “Good night. Happy New Year”. Once the unquestioned ruler of the oil-rich South American nation,in the videore leased by the White House, he was in a brown uniform, manacled and clutching a water bottle while two DEA officers held him on either side by his elbows.

 

Next, they were taken to the Metropolitan Detention Centre (MDC) in Brooklyn to await production in the NewYork federal court, which is expected. Maduro and his wife, seized overnight from their home on a military base, were first taken aboard a US warship on their way to face prosecution fora Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. Aplane carrying the deposed leader landed around 4:30 pm Saturday at an airport in NewYork City’snorthern suburbs.

 

MADURO BEING HELD AT NOTORIOUS BROOKLYN JAIL: THE Brooklyn jail holding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is facility so troubled, some judges have refused to send people there even as it has housed such famous inmates asmusic stars R. Kelly and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Opened in the early 1990s, the Metropolitan Detention Centre, or MDC Brooklyn, currently houses about 1,300 in mates.