Was Nicolás Maduro actually indicted by the United States six years ago?

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice in March 2020, alongside other senior Venezuelan officials, in line with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement at a January news conference.

An indictment is a public signal that the grand jury — in this case, the Grand Jury of the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York — has enough evidence to bring criminal charges to trial. 

In its 2020 case against Maduro, the United States charged the politician with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking, accusing him of conspiring to flood cocaine into the country and leading a drug cartel called “Cartel de los Soles.”

In the nearly six years since that indictment, Maduro had stayed in Venezuela, protected by his government. On Jan. 3, American special forces captured him and brought him and his wife to stand trial in New York.