// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
Venezuela's ex-leader Nicolás Maduro charged with conspiracy to commit torture
Nicolás Maduro has been in US custody since January of this year
Prosecutors in the United States have accused Venezuela's former leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, of conspiracy to commit torture.
The fresh charges against the couple were made public on Thursday and are in addition to the drug-trafficking and weapons charges already brought against them, which they have denied.
Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have been in custody since January in a detention centre in Brooklyn, where they were taken after US forces seized them in a pre-dawn raid on their compound in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
Human rights groups in Venezuela and former prisoners have long denounced what they have described as "systematic torture" in Venezuelan jails.
The new accusations relate to the alleged torture of US citizens who were being held in Venezuela while Maduro was in power.
The superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday accuses the former presidential couple of "entrenching themselves in power" by presiding "over a system of repression that relied on violence against political opposition, arbitrary detention, and the torture of detainees, including United States citizens".
According to the indictment, the torture included "electric shock, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation, punishment cells, and psychological torture".
The prosecutors allege that the psychological torture included threats to kill victims' families, including children.
The motivation behind the repression, according to the indictment, was to ensure that Maduro and his wife remained in power.