What to know about the U.S. military strikes on Venezuela
- President Trump said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were “captured and flown out of the Country” early Saturday morning, confirming a “large scale strike” had been carried out by U.S. forces, as explosions were reported in Caracas and elsewhere.
- The U.S. Army’s Delta Force, an elite special forces unit, carried out the operation to capture Maduro, officials told CBS News.
- A Republican senator said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had indicated that Maduro would face criminal charges in the U.S., where he was indicted years ago, and that Rubio “anticipates no further action in Venezuela.” The Trump administration has long accused Maduro of drug trafficking and working with gangs designated as terrorist organizations, which Maduro denies.
- The strikes follow months of U.S. military buildup in the region, with the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and numerous other warships positioned in the Caribbean.
- In recent weeks the U.S. has seized two oil tankers off Venezuela, launched deadly strikes on more than 30 boats the administration says were carrying drugs, and struck what President Trump called “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.”
Maduro’s capture comes exactly 35 years after U.S. arrested Panama’s Noriega
President Trump announced the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro early Saturday morning 35 years to the day after U.S. forces arrested another indicted Latin American leader, the late Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
A onetime U.S. ally and CIA informant, Noriega led Panama for much of the 1980s, but he fell out of favor with Washington toward the end of his reign due to allegations of drug trafficking.
Former President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to invade Panama in late 1989, leading Noriega to hide out in the Vatican embassy before surrendering to U.S. authorities on Jan. 3, 1990. He was convicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges and spent 20 years in an American prison before being sent to France to serve a money laundering sentence, and then to Panama where he was imprisoned on murder and other charges. Noriega died in Panama in 2017.
