- …prisoners at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, which houses 1,336 inmates, are subject to very restrictive conditions
BROOKLYN (CONVERSEER) – From the carpets of Miraflores to the darkness of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in Caracas by US forces two weeks ago and transferred the same day to a prison in Manhattan . A quick operation – not without deaths on the Venezuelan side – that ended when the door of his cell was closed.
A “disgusting, horrible and hell on earth” space is how those who have visited it describe it. According to witnesses who told CNN, it is dark, crowded and noisy. Although all prisons are miserable places, “the MDC [as the prison where Maduro is held, the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, is known] is perhaps the most miserable of all the ones I have visited,” said criminal analyst Elie Honig, who is one of those who have provided his testimony to the American network. Even those who issue the sentences admit it. Manhattan federal judge Jesse Furman decided not to send a man to that prison preventively in January 2024, due to its terrible conditions. The individual was later convicted of fentanyl trafficking.
Inmates spend up to 23 hours locked in their cells and are subject to very restrictive escort protocols when they leave. They also have limited access to phone calls, according to a report by the US Department of Justice. On the other hand, the prison’s overcrowding is also blatant. The MDC houses 1,336 inmates, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and there is both overcrowding and a shortage of personnel. Even the police officers themselves do not want to work there. In 2021, Manhattan federal court judge Colleen McMahon criticized the situation at the two centers managed by the federal administration in New York. Specifically, regarding the jailers, she said that “they change constantly, and only stay for a few months or a year at most”; and regarding the managers of the prison centers, she declared verbatim to the New York Post : “They are donkeys.”
The history of the two centers run by the same authorities is even darker. In 2021, newspaper headlines sucked the global media map with the death of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in his cell. The event, which occurred at the Manhattan Correctional Center – run by the same subjects – led to its closure. His ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, did live in the same walls where Maduro now spends his nights and stated that prison guards lit her cell every 15 minutes to make sure she was alive.
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Today, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, conditions at the MDC “have improved” due to “a substantial decrease in violence, limited time for inmates to leave their cells, and attempts to smuggle contraband,” officials recently said. The reports also justify that the MDC’s staffing has improved, with 87% of positions filled and a decrease in the number of inmates since January 2024.
Whether as a “drug lord” or a “kidnapped president,” Nicolás Maduro and Cília Flores could face life behind bars, although they would not do so in the prison they are currently in because it is a temporary facility. A 25-page indictment by US prosecutors outlines a case that allegedly began in 1999, when Maduro was first elected to public office. It says he, Flores, his son and three subjects participated in a “relentless cocaine trafficking campaign.”
The indictment accuses them of collaborating with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels, and the Aragua Train. But prosecutors also point out that the defendants provided “police cover and logistical support” for drug shipments through Venezuela, with the knowledge that they were headed to the United States. And the list goes on: providing passports to drug traffickers, providing diplomatic cover for planes to repatriate drug trafficking profits, or accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for the safe passage of drug shipments.
“What is your name?” asked Maduro, the judge in charge of the case, Alven Hellerstein, 92. “My name is Nicolás Maduro Moros, I am president of the Republic of Venezuela. I am kidnapped and I was captured in my home, in Caracas,” he replied, according to the official transcript. “There will be time to find out all this, for now I just want to know if you are Nicolás Maduro,” the judge concluded.
Behind closed doors, Maduro’s trial seems as opaque as the walls surrounding the prison where the former Venezuelan president now resides.
