Families of six young men killed in Venezuela between 2017 and 2021 filed a civil lawsuit on Tuesday in a US federal court in Brooklyn against former president Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of ordering extrajudicial executions carried out by the Special Action Forces (FAES) of the Venezuelan police. The 44-page complaint, lodged under the US Torture Victim Protection Act, alleges that Maduro created and commanded the FAES as a political instrument to eliminate dissent, and seeks compensatory and punitive damages. The plaintiffs, who are using pseudonyms to protect against reprisals, describe a pattern of pre-dawn raids in low-income Caracas neighbourhoods, where masked officers separated young men from their families, forced them to kneel, and shot them before staging scenes to suggest resistance.

According to the complaint, relatives were also beaten, detained, or forced to witness the killings, and Venezuela’s judiciary blocked any accountability. Maduro, who is currently detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting trial on federal drug trafficking and weapons charges, has previously pleaded not guilty and described himself as a ‘prisoner of war’. His legal team is expected to argue that he enjoys immunity as a former head of state, a position that US courts have not yet tested in this context. The lawsuit cites reports from the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the US State Department, and asserts that at least 1,300 people were killed by the FAES during the period in question, though non-governmental estimates place the figure higher.

The FAES unit was established by Maduro in 2017, ostensibly to combat organised crime, but was dissolved in 2021 after the UN and human rights organisations documented widespread abuses. A UN fact-finding mission had previously concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe Maduro and other senior officials bore responsibility for crimes against humanity. The case is one of the first civil actions to target a former head of state now in US custody, and it tests the reach of a 1991 law designed to allow victims of torture and extrajudicial killing to seek redress in American courts when local remedies are unavailable.

Viewed from Washington, the lawsuit adds a human rights dimension to the US government’s existing criminal case against Maduro, which stems from a January military operation that removed him from power in Caracas and transferred him to New York. The operation, ordered by President Donald Trump, has been criticised by some Latin American governments as a violation of sovereignty, but US officials have defended it as a lawful enforcement action against narcotics trafficking. The civil complaint does not depend on the outcome of the criminal trial, and legal analysts note that even if Maduro successfully claims immunity, the court may still allow discovery to proceed. No hearing date has been set for the civil suit, and the criminal trial is pending.