I intended to leave assessments of the U.S. rendition of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife to Latin American experts. But there are basic questions that touch upon my (supposed) area of expertise and the confusion surrounding them should be dispelled.
The first question is, why did U.S. President Donald Trump take action against Venezuela? The official justification is that Maduro is involved in drug trafficking. The indictment that was read in court this week after his arrest charged him with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
The credibility of that charge has been diminished by the recent pardon that Trump issued to Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison in the U.S. for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. Before the Trump pardon, U.S. officials had said Hernandez “was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
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