More than a dozen American citizens sat in Venezuelan prison cells and were tortured while Nicolás Maduro ran his narco-state. Now federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are adding torture charges to the pile already stacked against Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

The new charges target both Maduro and Flores specifically for the treatment of Americans wrongfully detained in Venezuelan government custody. Federal prosecutors are also considering charges against additional regime figures involved in the abuse. The existing indictment from the Southern District of New York already carries four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.

The indictment lays it out plainly: "Nicolas Maduro Moros, the defendant, now sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking." It goes further, naming Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello Rondón and former Minister of the Interior and Justice Ramón Rodríguez Chacín as co-defendants, stating that "drug trafficking has enriched and entrenched Venezuela's political and military elite" — including both of them.

This wasn't a cartel that happened to run a country. This was a country led by cartel members. The machinery of the Venezuelan state — its military, its intelligence services, its law enforcement — existed to move cocaine and protect the people moving it. Americans who ended up in their custody weren't political prisoners in any traditional sense. They were hostages of a drug operation wearing a national flag.

The capture itself remains one of the more remarkable military operations in world history. President Trump ordered the strike on Venezuela. Delta Force operators built a replica of Maduro's safe house and rehearsed the extraction until they could do it blind. A CIA asset embedded inside Maduro's inner circle fed real-time intelligence on his location and movements. When the operators moved, Maduro was taken from his bedroom inside his presidential palace. Despite a gun battle with Maduro's security forces, Delta forces were able to take Maduro and Flores from well within the wall of their compound, buried deep inside Venezuela's borders.

The international hand-wringing crowd spent years insisting that diplomacy was the only acceptable path with Maduro. Engage him. Negotiate. Respect Venezuelan sovereignty. The Americans rotting in his prisons while those conversations happened might have a different perspective on the timeline.

What the torture charges establish is something the narcotics counts alone didn't fully capture. The drug indictment painted Maduro as a trafficker who used state power to protect his operation. The torture charges paint him as something additional — a man whose regime deliberately brutalized American citizens in government custody. Not as collateral damage. Not as an unfortunate byproduct of a chaotic system. As policy.

Cilia Flores being named alongside her husband is worth noting. This isn't a case of guilty-by-marriage proximity. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York don't add defendants to torture indictments for symbolic reasons. They add them because the evidence trail leads there.

Four counts already on the books. Torture charges incoming. A wife indicted beside him. Two senior ministers named as co-defendants in a narco-trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors say ran for decades.

Maduro used to give six-hour speeches on state television about American imperialism. He gives them from a cell now.