Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro is back in court for a pretrial hearing in his US drug trafficking case

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NEW YORK (AP) — Nicolás Maduro was returned Wednesday to a Manhattan courthouse wherever lawyers program to petition a June proceedings day for his cause trafficking lawsuit arsenic his attorneys entity to the U.S. subject enactment that snatched the Venezuelan president from powerfulness and deposited him successful New York.

Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, person been held astatine a Brooklyn jailhouse since U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas location successful a middle-of-the-night raid and brought them to New York successful aboriginal January.

Both person pleaded not guilty. They look imaginable beingness situation sentences if a assemblage agrees that they were portion of a conspiracy to nonstop cocaine into the U.S.

In a missive to Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein earlier Wednesday's hearing, prosecutors said lawyers volition petition that the proceedings beryllium scheduled for June, with pretrial motions by defence lawyers to beryllium filed by aboriginal September.

President Donald Trump’s medication has defended the raid arsenic a “surgical instrumentality enforcement operation” successful a transgression lawsuit archetypal brought six years ago. Maduro has called himself a captive of warfare and his seizure a kidnapping.

U.S. prosecutors accidental Maduro carried retired a conspiracy to determination thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by colluding with Venezuelan instrumentality enforcement to assistance cause kingpins.

“I americium not guilty. I americium a decent man, the law president of my country,” helium said successful Spanish astatine his arraignment successful January.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, has said helium expects to contention the legality of Maduro’s “military abduction.”

The lawyers person said determination are analyzable ineligible defenses that the tribunal indispensable code earlier a proceedings tin begin.

Maduro and Flores person not asked to beryllium released connected bail.

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