Americans sue Venezuela's Maduro for anguish caused by imprisonment, alleged torture

MIAMI (AP) — A former U.S. Marine and a Florida man who were imprisoned in Venezuela have sued President Nicolás Maduro, accusing the leftist leader of heading a vast “criminal enterprise” that has co-opted the state and uses American citizens as bargaining chips in negotiations with the U.S.

The complaint filed Monday in Miami federal court by Matthew Heath and Osman Khan is similar to a slew of lawsuits that have resulted in major judgments for Americans imprisoned in Venezuela. All sought damages under a little-used federal law, the Anti-Terrorism Act, that allows American victims of foreign terror groups to seize the assets of their victimizers.

The latest lawsuit alleges that security officials under the command of Maduro subjected the men to a pattern of torture — waterboarding, electrocution, threats of rape with a nightstick, mind-altering medications and the repeated use of a cramped cell nicknamed “El Tigrito” — that is also being looked at by prosecutors from the International Criminal Court.

“The kidnapping, torture and ransoming of American citizens was part of a continuous and systematic scheme to coerce the United States government into policy concessions, the end of an oil embargo, and prisoner swaps,” attorneys for Heath and Khan argue in the 87-page complaint.

Among the other 17 named defendants are Maduro’s defense minister, attorney general and interior minister as well as state-run oil and gold-mining companies.

Heath, a former U.S. Marine corporal from Tennessee and onetime U.S. security consultant in Afghanistan, was arrested in 2020 at a roadblock in Venezuela. Authorities charged him with terrorism after allegedly finding weapons and a satellite phone in his possession. Maduro said he was in the country surveilling oil refineries as a spy for then-President Donald Trump.

Heath's family said he was stuck in Colombia when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down air travel, leaving him stranded. He crossed the border into Venezuela in the hope of taking a short boat ride to Aruba, where a trawler he fixed up to start a chartering business was docked, according to the complaint.

Khan was working in Colombia after graduating from college in Florida when he fell in love with a Venezuelan woman who invited him to meet her family. He was detained in January 2022 while crossing the border with his girlfriend and her father on a motorized canoe as instructed by the woman's brother, a Venezuelan national guardsman. He was later charged with crimes including terrorism and human trafficking.

The U.S. government determined both men were wrongfully detained on false charges. Heath and Khan were released — after being held 752 and 259 days respectively — in October 2022 along with five U.S. oil executives in exchange for two nephews of first lady Cilia Flores jailed in the U.S. on narcotics convictions.

Venezuela's government did not immediately comment on the lawsuit when contacted by The Associated Press but has long denied it targets Americans for imprisonment.

Other Americans who have been imprisoned in Venezuela have won major judgments against Maduro and his inner circle on similar legal grounds.

In 2022, a federal judge in Miami awarded $73 million in damages to the family of a prominent opponent of Maduro who died while in custody after inexplicably falling from the 10th floor of a building belonging to the SEBIN political police. And last year an exiled Venezuelan lawyer won $153 million after he was lured back home because his father had been kidnapped, only to end up imprisoned himself on trumped-up charges of working as a “financial terrorist.”

As in the earlier cases, Heath and Khan in their lawsuit accused Maduro of controlling the “Cartel of the Suns,” a purported drug-smuggling ring involving top Venezuelan officials and guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia allegedly flooding the U.S. with cocaine.

But collecting those large rewards has proven daunting. Neither Maduro nor any of his close aides are known to have properties or bank accounts in the U.S. under their name. Whatever wealth officials have stolen is more likely to be held by a myriad of front men whose assets are hard to trace and seize.

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