Inside a New York courthouse on Monday, Nicolás Maduro declared himself a prisoner of war, a status that the last Latin American leader seized by U.S. forces, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, also claimed.
Mr. Maduro’s declaration came during his first federal court appearance since he and his wife were captured in a U.S. military operation on Saturday morning in Venezuela and transferred to the United States.
It is not yet known what defense strategy Mr. Maduro might pursue. But the assertion resembled General Noriega’s approach, which allowed him to wear a military uniform at his trial and to have special accommodations in prison after his conviction on drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering charges.
General Noriega was captured in January 1990 and convicted in federal court in Miami in April 1992 after a seven-month trial. He served his time at a federal prison facility in South Florida that had trimmed lawns and palm trees.
His specially built lockup was more like a tiny house. The 250-square-foot cinder-block building had a bedroom, an office and an exercise bicycle, Jon May, one of his defense lawyers, recalled in an interview.
Prison guards nicknamed it “the presidential suite.”
General Noriega had no contact with the other federal prisoners. But Mr. May said the general had access to an open courtyard, which he could step into any time of day and, at his own expense, a telephone. From it, Mr. May said, General Noriega could make and receive calls, although incoming calls had to be arranged with the prison.
Defense lawyers had sought the prisoner-of-war designation for General Noriega before his trial in a bid to have the case dismissed. Prosecutors did not take a position on the general’s status but argued that the Geneva Conventions did not deprive the court of jurisdiction to hear the drug trafficking case.
The Federal District Court judge, William M. Hoeveler, agreed and ruled that he himself had the authority to try Panama’s captured leader on federal criminal offenses. But he allowed the defendant to wear his uniform at trial. The judge formally granted General Noriega prisoner-of-war status after his conviction in 1992.
Ultimately, prosecutors didn’t oppose General Noriega’s special accommodations or uniform.
Even before his conviction, the government allowed him to have access to a desktop computer and visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to a former prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
General Noriega died in May 2017 in Panama. He ended up serving 17 years of a 40-year sentence in the United States, was extradited to a prison in France, and repatriated in 2011 to serve another prison sentence.
Mr. May and other legal experts said it would be a stretch for Mr. Maduro to receive prisoner-of-war status. He never was a combatant, nor has he ever served in the Venezuelan military, although he has worn a military uniform with the presidential rank of commander in chief.
Also, President Trump has declared the United States at war with drug cartels, although the experts disagree that he has the authority to wage a war without congressional authority, factors that may make it even harder for Mr. Maduro to be recognized in U.S. federal court as a prisoner of war.
“He can try, but he’ll lose,” Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown, said of Mr. Maduro.
“The federal government will argue — probably correctly, despite what the Trump administration says — that we are not actually in a state of war with Venezuela,” he said.
To capture Gen. Noriega, the United States sent about 25,000 troops into Panama in late 1989, a full-fledged invasion that resulted in his surrender on Jan. 3, 1990. The invasion, called Operation Just Cause, began after Panama’s National Assembly declared that a state of war existed between the two nations, a condition that made it an international armed conflict.
The Trump administration has cast Saturday’s operation as the U.S. military supporting a request from the Justice Department to seize two people for charges pursuant to a federal, civilian indictment — Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Defense lawyers will probably raise other challenges and issues, the experts said, possibly including that Mr. Maduro is entitled to immunity as the head of state of a sovereign country. The U.S. government maintains that he obtained the status through a fraudulent election. General Noriega made a similar claim and lost.
Another issue could involve whether Mr. Maduro will have access to his financial resources to pay his lawyers. General Noriega’s lawyers obtained access to his funds for a while, but they were ultimately paid by the court.
Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002.
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