Free President Maduro and First Combatant Flores!

Hundreds come out to support kidnapped Venezuelan leaders

March 26 — Hundreds of people came to lower Manhattan this morning to demand that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros and First Combatant Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro be set free. Both were kidnapped by the Trump regime on Jan. 3, in a high-tech military ambush in which over 100 people were killed.

The U.S. Government is refusing to allow Maduro and Flores to use Venezuelan funds to pay for their attorneys. As one of their lawyers, Barry J. Pollack, pointed out in court today, this violates the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel.

A much older legal maxim is that defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Nothing says less of that than the orange jumpsuits that both Maduro and Flores were forced to wear at their court appearance today.

These jumpsuits are like those worn by the inmates in the U.S. concentration camp in Guantánamo, on land stolen from Cuba. Meanwhile, Cilia Flores suffers from a serious heart condition.

The White House is trying to frame the elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its First Combatant on phony charges of operating a vast drug network. This big lie is just as false as its claim that Renée Good and Alex Pretti — both killed by ICE Gestapo agents in Minneapolis — were “terrorists.”

What should be looked into is why the U.S. Justice Department dropped investigations of Citibank, Bank of America and other banksters for laundering drug money.

Before and after the Pentagon’s capture of Maduro and Flores, the U.S. Navy killed at least 163 human beings on boats because they were alleged to be drug smugglers. These killings without a trial amount to lynchings on the high seas.

Loud and powerful rally

A powerful four-hour rally was held outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan courthouse. Venezuelan flags, banners and signs were carried. “No troops on the ground, no bombs in the air, U.S. out of everywhere,” was chanted between speakers, who linked the attacks on Venezuela with the war on Iran.

Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement reminded people that they had rallied on International Women’s Day at the Brooklyn Detention Center, where Maduro and Flores were locked up. He said that it was a very dangerous time that demanded unity.

Wareham was a member of the New York 8+ whom the Reagan administration and then U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani tried to frame.

John Parker from the Struggle for Socialism Party pointed out Trump’s hypocrisy. “This is not about democracy. It’s about imperialism,” he said.

Parker pointed out that President Bush staged an unsuccessful coup in 2002 against President Hugo Chavez. Years later, Trump tried to put in Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader, who hadn’t even run for president. 

“What’s the real crime of Venezuela?” asked John Parker. “Is it nationalizing oil? It’s creating a great example of building socialism with communes?

“It’s an existential threat to capitalism and imperialism. … We know our role here is to build a movement in the belly of the beast so that we can give them the greatest stomach ache they have ever seen, inspired by the fight-back that we see today from Iran,” Parker concluded.   

A speaker from the New Afrikan Black Panther Party compared the seizure of Flores and Maduro to the kidnapping of the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture. Two hundred years later, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by the United States.

Other speakers included those from Brooklyn Against War, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Black Alliance for Peace, the Palaver Collective, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, the African People’s Socialist Party, and Workers World Party.