IT was only a matter of time. Washington had been signalling its intent for months as it quietly thickened its military footprint in the Caribbean, and Trump’s State Department made sure Nicolás Maduro and the men keeping him in power understood exactly what that meant. The writing was on the wall, in letters so large that only the wilfully blind could pretend not to see them.
Maduro chose defiance. He scorned every off‑ramp, clung to a crumbling presidency, and dared the United States to act. At the crack of dawn on Saturday, U.S. special forces called his bluff. By sunrise, Maduro was no longer in Palacio Miraflores; he was a prisoner in American custody, on his way to face the indictment that had been waiting for him for six long years.
That indictment, unsealed in the Southern District of New York in March 2020, charged him on four counts of narco‑terrorism and cocaine importation conspiracy, alleging that he sat at the apex of the Cartel de los Soles and conspired with FARC to “flood” the United States with cocaine. A multimillion‑dollar reward was placed on his head. For years, the case sat in fugitive limbo while Maduro played president and rigged elections. But an indictment, like time, does not simply disappear because the accused pretends it does.
He staged a sham election in July 2024, barred María Corina Machado from running, declared himself victorious and invited global condemnation. In January 2025, just as Trump was being sworn in for a second term in Washington, Maduro swore himself in for a third term in Caracas. The former (Trump’s) was recognised as legitimate; the latter faced widespread international condemnation. The United States promptly branded Maduro an illegitimate leader, re‑tightened sanctions, doubled the bounty on his head to US$50 million, and, on November 24, 2025, formally designated him a member of a foreign terrorist organisation, expressly tying that label to the same 2020 narco‑terrorism charges.
This is the context in which Azruddin and Nazar Shell Mohamed now find themselves indicted in Florida and facing extradition. They and their supporters may comfort themselves by inventing clever social media mythologies, making outlandish allegations, or even engaging in constitutional acrobatics, but the United States operates on a different schedule. Once Washington decides that someone has crossed a line, whether from narco‑terrorism in Caracas to gold‑fuelled fraud in Georgetown, the question is not if they will be brought before an American judge, but when and how.
Trump has already made clear that the United States is “locked and loaded” and prepared to bend the old norms of international law and diplomacy when core interests are at stake. This is not new. Under Ronald Reagan, the United States invaded Grenada in 1983 after Maurice Bishop was overthrown and killed and General Hudson Austin’s Revolutionary Military Council imposed curfews, jailed opponents, suspended elections and tilted hard toward Cuba and the Soviet Union. Once the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, joined by Barbados and Jamaica, formally requested U.S. military help, Washington had all the political cover it needed to launch Operation Urgent Fury.
Later that decade, under George H. W. Bush, Operation Just Cause toppled Manuel Noriega in Panama. Noriega had already been indicted in the United States on drug‑trafficking and racketeering charges, accused of running a cocaine pipeline and laundering cartel money through Panamanian banks. When his regime declared a “state of war” against the U.S. and Panamanian forces killed a U.S. Marine officer, the die was cast. Noriega was seized, flown to Miami, convicted on multiple counts, and sentenced to decades in federal prison.
Even that was not the end. While he sat in an American cell, Panamanian courts convicted him in absentia for murder and human‑rights abuses. When his U.S. sentence was done, he was shipped to France, convicted again for laundering Medellín cartel funds, and then sent back to Panama to serve yet more time. He died at 83, having spent virtually every year after the invasion as a prisoner.
From Grenada to Panama, from Abbottabad under President Barack Obama to the gallows where Saddam Hussein met his fate under President George W. Bush, the pattern is brutally consistent: when the United States concludes that you are both a criminal problem and a strategic challenge, geography ceases to be a shield you can hide behind. Borders become logistics, and time becomes paperwork.
That is the real lesson for the Mohameds and for those Guyanese still insisting that this is all “politics” that can be lawyered away with endless petitions before Guyana’s High Court. Lawyers are the only ones who will profit at the expense of the Mohameds’ deep pockets.
Azruddin can try to spin a narrative for his supporters in Guyana, but he cannot spin away a federal indictment. He can delay proceedings in Georgetown, but he cannot indefinitely duck a grand jury’s decision in Miami. Once the United States has put your name on an indictment and on a plane ticket, all roads, no matter how winding they appear from here, lead in one direction: towards a courtroom door that only opens from the inside.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.