Who is Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian president captured by the US following a special Delta Force operation

Nicolas Maduro, the 63-year-old president of Venezuela, was captured Saturday in a US special forces operation after more than a decade in power, during which the South American country experienced a dramatic involution towards authoritarianism and faced a collapse in living standards, USA Today reports.

Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that the leader of Venezuela was captured by US special forces, without giving any other details.

“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large-scale attack against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who was, along with his wife, captured and removed from the country. This operation was carried out in collaboration with US special forces. Details will follow. A press conference will be held today at 11:00 a.m. (US time) at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Trump tweeted on his Truth Social social network.

The US president did not give further details on how Maduro was captured or where he was taken, and the Venezuelan government has not yet confirmed this, according to the BBC. But US officials told CBS News that the Venezuelan president was captured early Saturday by members of Delta Force, the US military's top special forces unit.

The elite Delta Force unit was also responsible for the 2019 mission that killed former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Nicolas Maduro was the successor chosen by Hugo Chavez to lead Venezuela

In the 1980s, Maduro worked as a bodyguard and bus driver, while also being part of the Caracas metro transport system workers' union.

He is the designated successor of former socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013.

The relationship between the two began in the 1990s, when the current president became involved in securing the release of Chavez, who had been imprisoned for activities against the government, including planning a coup to oust then-president Carlos Andrés Pérez.

Maduro later supported Chavez's 1998 presidential campaign, “which promised to give poor Venezuelans a greater share of the economic prosperity dominated by the wealthy ruling elite”, which earned him a place in Chavez's inner circle.

Before becoming the country's supreme leader, he held the positions of foreign minister and vice president. In 2013, he married Cilia Flores, who frequently appears with him in photos taken at political events.

Maduro has a 35-year-old son, Nicolas Maduro (Jr.) Guerra, from his first marriage to Adriana Guerra Angulo.

Maduro represents the United Socialist Party of Venezuela – a left-wing political formation considered by political analysts to be undemocratic.

Maduro has been widely accused of rigging Venezuela's last presidential election

Maduro has been president for three terms, securing the last of them in presidential elections organized by his regime last year.

The South American country's electoral commission declared him the winner by a narrow margin, and Maduro claimed victory and tightened his grip on power, brutally cracking down on the protests that followed.

Opinion polls before the election showed that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate, would get around 65% of the vote, while Maduro was rated at just over 30%. The United States, the EU and other countries have not recognized the victory claimed by Nicolas Maduro.

The Venezuelan opposition mobilized on a large scale and gathered systematic documentation proving that Urrutia had been the real winner of the election. He fled to Spain in exile, while Maria Corina Machado, the original opposition candidate in the presidential election, remained in Venezuela and went into hiding.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on October 10 this year that it had chosen Machado as the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Machado and Urrutia received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament last year.

Trump's accusations against Maduro

Trump himself has claimed that Maduro is behind the smuggling of illegal drugs into the United States as the alleged leader of the Cartel de los Soles, a group that the US State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Trump has signaled imminent attacks in Venezuela since late last year, after telling US troops on Thanksgiving Day that the military operation would soon include strikes on the ground.

The US president's accusations also came as Maduro and his top generals were indicted in 2020 for their alleged involvement in a drug-trafficking conspiracy.

Venezuela's president has denied any connection to illegal drug trafficking and the Venezuelan government condemned Trump's statements, describing them as a “colonialist threat” to the South American country's sovereignty and incompatible with international law.

The United States had already positioned an aircraft carrier, guided-missile destroyers and a special operations vessel near Venezuela since last year. About 12,000 US troops were stationed in the area.