WILAYAH NEWS VOICE OF THE GLOBAL AWAKENING
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The US Justice Department has quietly scaled back its indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, retreating from a central Trump-era claim that he led a drug cartel.
The original accusation, included in a 2020 grand jury indictment, portrayed the Cartel de los Soles as an organized criminal group allegedly led by Maduro and engaged in large-scale cocaine trafficking.
The claim became a central pillar of Washington’s pressure campaign against Caracas and was repeatedly cited to justify escalating sanctions and military operations.
In July 2025, the US Treasury Department designated the so-called cartel as a terrorist organization, a move later backed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien.
Yet specialists in Latin American crime and narcotics have long noted that the “Cartel de los Soles” is not a verifiable organization but a slang term coined by Venezuelan media in the 1990s to describe corruption among individual military officials — not a structured cartel.
That distinction is now reflected in the revised indictment, released after Maduro was kidnapped by US forces. While it still accuses him of participating in a drug-trafficking conspiracy, it drops the claim that the Cartel de los Soles exists as an actual cartel, redefining it instead as a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption” allegedly fueled by drug profits.
Maduro and his wife were kidnapped from their residence in Caracas on Saturday, flown out of Venezuela by helicopter, and then transported aboard a warship some 3,400 kilometers to New York City to face federal charges.
The aggression capped months of pressure and military buildup off Venezuela’s coast, including dozens of attacks on alleged drug vessels that resulted in at least 115 deaths — operations Caracas has rejected as baseless.
Where the previous indictment referenced the Cartel de los Soles 32 times, the revised version mentions it only twice.
The revisions have prompted criticism of the Trump administration’s earlier designation of the group as a foreign terrorist organization.
Experts welcomed the clarification but noted that US designations do not require courtroom standards of proof, making them vulnerable to political use.
Despite the Justice Department’s retreat, Rubio continued to describe the Cartel de los Soles as an actual cartel during an NBC Meet the Press interview, claiming that US forces reserve the right to strike drug shipments linked to the group and that Maduro is its leader.
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment and the United Nations’ World Drug Report have never listed Cartel de los Soles as an active trafficking organization.
Appearing in a New York federal court on Monday, Maduro pleaded not guilty. “I am innocent. I am not guilty of anything that is mentioned here,” he said, later describing himself as “a prisoner of war” and stressing that he remained Venezuela’s president.
Caracas has consistently rejected any involvement in drug trafficking, maintaining that Washington used narcotics allegations to legitimize an illegal assault aimed at overthrowing the government and seizing control of the country’s vast oil reserves.
Hours after the attack, US President Donald Trump said the United States would run Venezuela temporarily and be “very strongly involved” in its oil industry — remarks that reinforced Venezuelan claims about Washington’s true objectives.
The revised indictment marks a notable pullback from the Trump administration’s earlier narrative, even as legal proceedings continue — leaving unresolved questions about how unproven drug allegations became the basis for military action and regime-change ambitions.
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