Two Americans are suing President Nicolás Maduro and more than 15 officials of his government for physical and psychological torture they suffered during their imprisonment in Venezuela.
A Florida man and a former Marine who were imprisoned in Venezuela have sued President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of leading a vast “criminal enterprise” that has co-opted the state and used U.S. citizens as chips in negotiations with Washington.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court by Matthew Heath and Osman Khan is similar to a series of lawsuits that have led to high-profile rulings in favor of Americans imprisoned in Venezuela. All sought to obtain damages under a little-used federal law, the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American victims of foreign terrorist groups to seize the assets of their attackers.
The most recent lawsuit alleges that security officials under Maduro subjected the men to a pattern of torture — simulated drowning, electrocution, threats of rape with a baton, mind-altering medications and repeated use of a cramped cell nicknamed “El Tigrito”—which is also being investigated by prosecutors from the International Criminal Court.
“The kidnapping, torture and ransom of American citizens were part of an ongoing and systematic plan to coerce the US government into making political concessions, ending an oil embargo and exchanging prisoners,” Heath and Khan's attorneys argue. in the 87-page lawsuit.
The other 17 defendants include Maduro's defense minister, attorney general and interior minister, as well as state oil and gold mining companies.
Heath, a Tennessee-based former U.S. Marine Corps corporal and former security consultant in Afghanistan, was arrested at a checkpoint in Venezuela in 2020. Authorities charged him with terrorism after allegedly finding weapons and a satellite phone in his possession. . Maduro said he was in the country monitoring oil refineries, spying for then-President Donald Trump.
Heath's family said he was stranded in Colombia when the COVID-19 pandemic forced air traffic to shut down, leaving him stranded. He crossed the border into Venezuela hoping to take a short boat trip to Aruba, where a trawler he had arranged to start a business where he would rent it was anchored, according to the lawsuit.
Khan was working in Colombia after graduating from college in Florida when he fell in love with a Venezuelan woman who invited him to meet her family. He was detained in January 2022 while crossing the border with his girlfriend and her father in a motorized canoe, as instructed by the woman's brother, a member of the Venezuelan National Guard. He was later charged with crimes including terrorism and human trafficking.
The United States government determined that both men were unjustly detained based on trumped-up charges. Heath and Khan were released — after being detained for 752 and 259 days respectively — in October 2022, along with five American oil executives, in exchange for two nephews of first lady Cilia Flores imprisoned in the United States on narcotics convictions.
Venezuela's government did not immediately comment on the lawsuit when contacted by The Associated Press, but has long denied that its goal is to imprison Americans.
Other Americans who have been imprisoned in Venezuela have won high-profile rulings against Maduro and his inner circle on similar legal grounds.
In 2022, a federal judge in Miami awarded $73 million in damages to the family of a prominent Maduro opponent who died while in custody after inexplicably falling from the tenth floor of a building belonging to the political police. SEBIN. And last year, an exiled Venezuelan lawyer made $153 million after he was lured back to his country because his father had been kidnapped, only to end up imprisoned himself on trumped-up charges of working as a “financial terrorist.”
As in previous cases, in their lawsuit Heath and Khan accused Maduro of controlling the “Cartel of the Suns,” an alleged drug smuggling gang involving senior Venezuelan officials and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and that supposedly floods the United States with cocaine.
But collecting those big rewards has proven to be a daunting task. Maduro or any of his close aides are not known to have property or bank accounts in the United States in their names. Any wealth officials have stolen is more likely to be in the hands of large numbers of front men whose assets are difficult to trace and confiscate.