**US federal prosecutors in Manhattan added conspiracy-to-torture charges in early October 2026 against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, supplementing earlier narco-terrorism, cocaine-importation, and weapons counts tied to allegations of state-sponsored repression.** Maduro and Flores have been detained at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since their January 2026 capture by US forces in Caracas. Their June 2027 trial carries potential life sentences or mandatory minimums of 50 years if convicted on all counts. Defense motions seek dismissal on immunity and due-process grounds related to the raid, while prosecutors argue no immunity applies to former officials of a prior regime. Traders appear to weigh the strength of the expanded evidence against these procedural challenges and the inherent uncertainties of a complex federal prosecution, keeping “no prison time” as the plurality outcome while assigning meaningful probability to lengthy terms.