{"id":205,"date":"2026-01-03T12:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T12:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/?p=205"},"modified":"2026-01-05T12:21:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T12:21:40","slug":"maduro-capture-international-law-framing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/maduro-capture-international-law-framing\/","title":{"rendered":"Maduro &#8220;capture&#8221; &#8211; International Law Framing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s look at this from a legal stand point. Trump calls this the &#8220;capture&#8221; of the Venezuelan President and his wife. This can also be considered the kidnapping of the couple. There is little in US Federal Law that permits this action and nothing in International Law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There has been some suggestion that Maduro had negotiated an exit of his country, but as this action is now indicating legal action against Maduro in the USA, it is not likely to be part of any agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is this more of an action to gain access to oil, personally I think that this is a big part of the action, as always, the USA continues to seek access to more fossil fuels in the face of undeniable and overwhelming scientific evidence of global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"international-law-framing\">International law framing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Treaties relied on rhetorically:<\/strong>\u00a0U.S. officials justify extraterritorial drug prosecutions by invoking obligations under UN drug\u2011control conventions (e.g., to criminalize and prosecute major trafficking), but these conventions do not themselves authorize the U.S. to place a bounty or unilaterally \u201corder\u201d another state\u2019s head of state to be captured.\u200b<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Use of force and sovereignty:<\/strong>\u00a0If capture involves U.S. agents or forces operating on Venezuelan territory without that state\u2019s consent, it would raise serious issues under the UN Charter prohibition on the use of force and the customary rule of respect for territorial sovereignty, because no clear self\u2011defence justification (in the sense of an armed attack) has been internationally accepted in this context.\u200b<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"summary-of-what-law-actually-applies\">Summary of what law actually applies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The concrete legal tools Trump is using are:\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>U.S. federal criminal jurisdiction and indictments for narcotics and \u201cnarco\u2011terrorism\u201d offences.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>U.S. reward authorities such as the Narcotics Rewards Program to put a monetary bounty on Maduro\u2019s capture.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>International law, as generally understood, does\u00a0<strong>not<\/strong>\u00a0provide a clean, widely accepted legal basis for abducting or seizing a sitting foreign head of state on that state\u2019s own territory without its consent; instead, such an operation would likely be viewed by most states as a violation of Venezuela\u2019s sovereignty and of the UN Charter\u2019s rules on the use of force.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Perspective<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the President of the USA was &#8220;captured&#8221; by the Venezuelan military, what would the rest of the world say? OK, hardly unlikely as they don&#8217;t have the military ability, however, from a legal position, there would (I&#8217;m sure) be an outpouring of insult and injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not saying that the future results of this action are bad, but allowing any nation to conduct military actions of this sort should not be allowed. It is an action that threatens the sovereignty of other nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, let me say that &#8220;Narco-Terrorism&#8221; is not real. Sure, there are narcotics syndicates that market their drugs in the USA as well as many other countries, but if selling drugs is an act of terrorism, then why is the USA arresting people for drugs offences and not terrorist offences? The answer is simple, it is a way of changing the narrative to one that changes the impact of actions taken against countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s look at this from a legal stand point. Trump calls this the &#8220;capture&#8221; of the Venezuelan President and his wife. This can also be considered the kidnapping of the couple. There is little in US Federal Law that permits this action and nothing in International Law. There has been some suggestion that Maduro had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diary-of-a-grumpy-guy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyoldguy.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}