Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was "arrested" by US forces under the cover of nightfall during a military attack, according to the Trump administration.
The 63-year-old former unionist has been in power for more than a decade and was "captured" in a "large scale strike against Venezuela" announced by US President Donald Trump on Saturday.
Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela, the US government repeatedly accused Mr Maduro of directing and funding drug cartels and Mr Trump pressured him for months to relinquish his leadership.
Here is what is known about the man set to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.
A working class unionist-turned-politician
Mr Maduro was born into a working class family in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas on November 23, 1962.
The son of a trade union leader, he was drawn to left-wing politics while working as a bus driver in the city at the same time that former military lieutenant colonel Hugo Chavez staged a failed coup attempt.
Mr Chavez was jailed for trying to usurp the Venezuelan government and Mr Maduro later campaigned for his release, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
After Mr Chavez's democratic election in 1998, Mr Maduro won a seat in Venezuela's legislative National Assembly and grew to become a fervent supporter of the country's new president.
While Mr Chavez led an assertive 14-year regime of nationalising key assets and creating a two million-member civilian militia, Mr Maduro's political repertoire within his government grew.
Between 2006 and 2013 while foreign minister, he helped Mr Chavez expand Venezuela's diplomatic ties with countries such as Russia, China and Iran at the expense of relations with Washington DC, according to the US-based Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2012 while Mr Chavez's health declined, Mr Maduro was hand-picked by the president to become the country's vice-president and later his successor.
A year later, Mr Maduro was installed as Venezuela's leader after claiming a narrow election victory.
An oil collapse and alleged crimes against humanity
While the early years of Mr Chavez's presidency was buoyed by steadily rising and lucrative crude oil prices, Mr Maduro was not afforded the same fortune.
By 2013, global oil prices began to collapse and a sharp drop in Venezuela's wealth sparked increasing levels of violence, hyperinflation and shortages of food, basic goods and critical medicine.
[OIL DW]Over the next five years, Mr Maduro oversaw a divided nation and endorsed harsh crackdowns against political opponents and people who protested his leadership.
Human Rights Watch said during that period, Mr Maduro allegedly illegally consolidated authoritarian political power that facilitated crimes against humanity such as the kidnapping, torture and murder of civilian Venezuelans.
Last month, a UN fact-finding mission said it had found Venezuela's Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) had committed serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity over more than a decade in targeting political opponents.
The independent mission said in a report that the GNB was involved in acts that may constitute crimes against humanity, including arbitrary detentions, sexual violence, and torture during protest crackdowns and targeted political persecution since 2014 under Mr Maduro.
Those alleged crimes have seen almost eight million Venezuelans flee abroad since 2014 in one of the largest Latin American exoduses in recent memory, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Maduro held power in disputed elections
When Mr Maduro was re-elected during Venezuela's 2018 presidential ballot, the result was condemned by dozens of countries who said it allegedly violated electoral integrity standards, the independent, multinational Electoral Integrity Project said.
The president maintained power with six million Venezuelans' votes and complete control of the national military, despite opposition election boycotts and a voter turnout of just 46 per cent — the lowest in the country's history, according to the Project citing Spanish newspaper El Pais.
After sanctioning Venezuelan oil over the country's alleged "humanitarian crisis", the first Trump administration in 2018 labelled Mr Maduro's re-election as a "sham" that was "a further blow to the proud democratic tradition of Venezuela".
Amid a social uproar against the legitimacy of Mr Maduro's leadership, then-opposition leader Juan Guaidó attempted to orchestrate what Mr Maduro later labelled a months-long coup in 2019.
Mr Trump followed, releasing a White House statement that announced US recognition of Mr Guaidó as Venezuela's leader.
Mr Guaidó's announcement sparked a rapid spiral of social unrest in which multiple Venezuelans were killed and dozens more were injured, according to local medical officials at the time.
The coup attempt ultimately failed and Mr Maduro maintained power and control of the nation's military, although diplomatic ties with the US had collapsed.
The US 'war on narco-terrorists'
The current Trump administration alleges Mr Maduro is the quasi leader of the Cártel de los Soles, a drug cartel that the US has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Mr Maduro is accused of funding the cartel "to carry out its objective of using illegal narcotics as a weapon to 'flood' the United States".
The White House also claims Mr Maduro's connection to the cartel helped facilitate the drug trafficking of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, which the Trump administration says "unlawfully infiltrated the United States" and was waging "irregular warfare" against Americans.In 2020, Mr Maduro was indicted in the US state of New York over allegations that he was responsible for "narco-terrorism" involving cocaine importation and the possession of "machine guns and destructive devices".In August last year, the US State Department doubled a reward for information that led to Mr Maduro's arrest to $US50 million.
Mr Maduro has always denied any involvement in crime and repeatedly claimed the US pursued regime change in a bid to control Venezuela's natural resources.
While the US amassed the largest build-up of military forces in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as a way to pressure Mr Maduro, the Venezuelan president led a public display of repeatedly calling for peace.
At the same time, he mobilised 200,000 national military members and encouraged Venezuela's civilian army — the Bolivarian Militia — to take up arms in the event of any foreign attack.
On November 4, he told a meeting of the country's national assembly that US media coverage of his movements had made him "more famous than Taylor Swift" and Puerto Rican musician Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known by his stage name Bad Bunny.
Less than a fortnight later, Mr Maduro was broadcast on national TV pleading for a de-escalation of tensions with the US and singing John Lennon's song Imagine.
On Saturday, Mr Trump announced that the US military had attacked Venezuela and "captured" Mr Maduro. The US president said Mr Maduro and his wife had been flown out of the country.
"Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States," Ms Bondi said in a statement posted on X.
Mr Trump has said Mr Maduro and his wife are currently being held on a US Navy ship ahead of their transfer to New York to face charges.
