Title: US Citizens Sue Maduro, Alleging Torture and ‘Criminal Enterprise‘ in Venezuela
In a significant legal move, two American men – Matthew Heath and Osman Khan – have filed a lawsuit against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of heading a vast criminal organization that has hijacked the state and uses US citizens as pawns in negotiations with Washington.
Filed on Monday in a Miami federal court, the 87-page lawsuit is reminiscent of several cases that have ended in substantial victories for Americans unfairly detained in Venezuela. Like these precedents, Heath and Khan’s suit seeks damages under the little-used Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows US victims of foreign terror groups to seize assets from their perpetrators.
The latest suit alleges that security officials answerable to Maduro subjected the men to a pattern of torture, including mock drowning, electrocution, threats of sexual assault with rods, mind-altering drugs, and repeated use of a claustrophobic cell known as "El Tigrito." This torturous regimen is also under investigation by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.
"Kidnapping, torture, and ransoming of US citizens were part of a continuous, systematic plan to coerce the US government into making political concessions, ending a petroleum embargo, and exchanging prisoners," Heath and Khan’s lawyers argue in the suit.
Among the other 17 defendants are Maduro’s Minister of Defense, Attorney General, and Interior Minister, as well as state-owned oil and gold mining companies.
Heath, a former US Marine Corps sergeant from Tennessee and former security consultant in Afghanistan, was arrested at a checkpoint in Venezuela in 2020. Authorities accused him of terrorism after allegedly finding weapons and a satellite phone in his possession. Maduro claimed Heath was in the country surveilling oil refineries, spying for then-President Donald Trump.
Heath’s family said he was stranded in Colombia due to COVID-19 flight closures and crossed into Venezuela hoping to take a short boat trip to Aruba, where a trawler he had fixed was anchored for a planned charter business.
Khan, a university graduate from Florida, was visiting his girlfriend’s family in Venezuela when he was detained in January 2022 while crossing the border in a motorized canoe. He was later charged with crimes including terrorism and human trafficking.
The US government determined both men were unjustly detained on false charges. Heath and Khan were released in October 2022, along with five American oil executives, in exchange for two nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, imprisoned in the US on drug offenses.
Venezuela’s government did not comment on the lawsuit when contacted by The Associated Press but has long denied aiming to incarcerate Americans.
Other Americans detained in Venezuela have won significant rulings against Maduro and his inner circle for similar legal reasons. In 2022, a Miami federal judge awarded $73 million in damages to the family of a prominent Maduro opponent who died during detention, after inexplicably falling from the tenth floor of a building owned by the SEBIN secret police. Last year, a Venezuelan lawyer in exile won $153 million after being lured back to his country on the pretext that his father had been kidnapped, only to be jailed himself on fabricated charges of "financial terrorism."
Like these previous cases, Heath and Khan’s lawsuit accuses Maduro of controlling the "Cartel of the Suns," a presumed drug-trafficking network involving high-ranking Venezuelan officials and Colombian guerrilla fighters that allegedly floods the US with cocaine.
However, collecting these substantial awards has proven challenging. It’s unclear whether Maduro or his close aides have properties or bank accounts in the US. Any wealth they may have stolen is likely held by numerous intermediaries whose assets are difficult to trace and seize.
This article was translated from English using a generative artificial intelligence tool.
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