Overview
- Five Venezuelan plaintiffs filed a federal complaint in the Eastern District of New York accusing Maduro of responsibility for six alleged extrajudicial killings carried out by the FAES between 2017 and 2021 and asking the court for compensation.
- The suit says FAES was created as an elite police unit but was used to suppress dissent in poor neighborhoods, and it cites estimates that FAES were linked to at least 1,300 deaths from 2017 to 2020.
- The complaint includes accounts of torture and killings at or near victims’ homes and says plaintiffs are using U.S. civil law because they see Venezuela’s courts as unsafe or ineffective for redress.
- The filing refers to a December 2025 UN independent mission report that concluded there are reasonable grounds to consider Maduro and senior officials possibly responsible for documented crimes.
- Maduro is currently detained in New York on separate U.S. narcoterrorism and drug charges and has pleaded not guilty, and the civil suit could add a parallel path for accountability and testimony that may inform broader investigations and pressure for reparations.