Prosecutors said the two men, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, were first arrested in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and then brought to New York. According to people familiar with the matter, Haitian police officers arrested the men before turning them over to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and flown the same day to New York in a DEA jet.
The politically fraught case has major implications for the already tenuous U.S.-Venezuelan relationship and comes amid U.S. accusations that the top echelon of the government in Caracas is involved in the narcotics trade at a time that the country’s economy is crumbling.
The Venezuelan government has yet to officially respond to the charges.
Mr. Campo Flores and Mr. Flores de Freitas appeared in New York federal court Thursday evening but didn’t enter a plea. The two men were held without bail, but they can apply for release at a hearing scheduled for next week. Lawyers for both men said their clients would plead not guilty.
The courtroom was packed with media from Latin America. Both men wore light beards and styled hair and listened through an interpreter as a magistrate judge explained their legal rights to them.
Culled from Wall Street Journal
No comments:
Post a Comment