By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK, July 21 (Reuters) – Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday proposed a June 2027 start date for Maduro’s U.S. criminal trial on drug trafficking charges.
The joint proposal came in a court filing ahead of a hearing in Maduro’s case scheduled for Wednesday at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT) in Manhattan federal court. The filing provided a rough blueprint of the possible next steps in one of the most high-profile and consequential criminal cases in recent U.S. history.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is overseeing the case, must ultimately set the schedule. The parties said in the filing that they may seek changes to the schedule.
U.S. Special Forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas during a nighttime raid in January and brought them to New York to face the charges. They have pleaded not guilty.
In the filing, lawyers for both sides proposed that Maduro’s first round of legal motions to try to have the case dismissed would be due on September 2. That would likely include a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that he should be immune from prosecution as the head of a sovereign state.
Maduro would then file a second round of legal motions by January 11, after prosecutors hand over any classified evidence for the defense’s review, according to the filing.
Maduro, a socialist who had an antagonistic relationship with Washington while leading Venezuela from 2013 until his capture, referred to himself as a “prisoner of war” during his January 5 appearance. He has long accused the United States of seeking his ouster to gain greater control of the country’s vast oil reserves.
The United States calls Maduro a corrupt dictator whose mismanagement of the economy led to an economic collapse, and accuses him of rigging his reelection votes in 2018 and 2024. It stopped recognizing him as Venezuela’s legitimate president in 2019.
Maduro and Flores have been held in a federal jail in Brooklyn since they were brought to the U.S. in January.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Tom Hogue and Christian Schmollinger)
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