00:00Nicholas Maduro has made a court appearance in New York, his first since his capture and rendition by U.S. Special Forces.
00:07Maduro and his wife, and as well as First Lady Celia Torres, were escorted by armed soldiers on the way to the court.
00:13At the scene, there were scores of reporters and hundreds of protesters calling for Maduro's release.
00:19Inside the courtroom, Maduro pleaded,
00:21Not guilty on charges of drug trafficking, he declared to the court,
00:25I'm innocent, I'm not guilty, I'm a decent man,
00:28I'm still president of my country.
00:30And his wife, she too said that she was not guilty, adding, completely innocent.
00:36That's the scene. Let's get more details about how this all took place.
00:39Jessica Lemissurier joins us now from New York, where Maduro has made that appearance.
00:44Jess, tell us about what happened in that courtroom.
00:50Well, Maduro described himself as a prisoner of war,
00:55a kidnapped president during that court session,
01:00in which both Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty
01:03to these federal charges of drugs, drugs and weapons trafficking,
01:09including narco-terrorism conspiracy.
01:13He is expected to be back in court again for hearing on March 17th,
01:19but today's session was reasonably short with him just being advised of the charges,
01:25the charges brought against him, him saying he's pleading not guilty.
01:28We also learnt who he has selected for his attorney.
01:34He has chosen Barry Joel Pollack as his attorney in this case.
01:40He's best known for defending WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the past.
01:46But really, quite a short hearing today, but ultimately, this trial,
01:50once it gets going, is probably going to last for a very long time.
01:55We will expect Maduro to try to plead presidential immunity,
02:01but he's going to be hard-pressed to do that
02:03because the United States is arguing that he cannot be granted that
02:07because the US does not consider him to be the rightful president of Venezuela.
02:13Jessica, I know you can't be in two places at once.
02:15You're covering the court case, but also on the other side of town at the UN,
02:19a special meeting called by Venezuela to address the situation.
02:24Can you give us a sense about how that is going?
02:30Well, at the United Nations, the talk is, of course,
02:34all about the possibility that the United States has violated international law
02:41by going into Venezuela, seizing the president and bringing him here to the United States.
02:47Certainly, the UN considers that the United States is in breach of the UN Charter,
02:55which makes it illegal for any country to do something of this sort,
02:58to go into a sovereign nation and detain its leader.
03:02And we had some strong words inside the Security Council,
03:05especially from Russia and China, you know,
03:08accusing the United States of sort of imperialism,
03:11these sort of imperialist actions that go against international law.
03:16Jessica de Missouri, thank you very much indeed.
03:20As Jessica was speaking, we saw images coming from Caracas of Delce Rodriguez
03:23being sworn in as Maduro's successor, interim president.
03:27And there is that.
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