WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to warn Wednesday that oil-rich Venezuela’s leader will suffer the fate of US-deposed predecessor Nicolas Maduro if she fails to comply with US wishes.
Delcy Rodriguez, who was vice president and now acting president, “is well aware of the fate of Maduro,” Rubio would tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to prepared testimony.
“It is our belief that her own self-interest aligns with advancing our key objectives,” Rubio was to say.
“Make no mistake, as the president has stated, we are prepared to use force to ensure maximum cooperation if other methods fail,” he said in the prepared testimony, referring to President Donald Trump.
Rubio, a former senator, agreed to testify before the committee after weeks of Democrats accusing the Trump administration of both deceiving lawmakers and exceeding its authority by using force.
US commandoes raided Caracas on January 3 and seized Maduro, a longtime leftist nemesis of Washington, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The couple were flown to New York to stand trial on US-issued charges of drug trafficking, which they deny.
Rubio in his prepared testimony staunchly defended the operation, saying the United States “arrested two narcotraffickers” and called Maduro “an indicted drug trafficker, not a legal head of state.”
“All of this was accomplished without the loss of a single American life, or an ongoing military occupation,” Rubio said.
“History features few examples where so much was achieved at so little cost.”
Venezuelan officials say more than 100 people died, both Venezuelans and Cubans who unsuccessfully tried to protect Maduro.
Trump has demanded that Rodriguez work to benefit US oil companies.
Trump indicated hours after deposing Maduro that he favored working by pressuring Rodriguez rather than seeking to empower Venezuela’s democratic opposition, dismissing its leader Maria Corina Machado as a “very nice woman” who did not command “respect.”
But Trump sounded more favorable to Machado after she visited him at the White House and presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize, which she won last year despite Trump loudly coveting the prestigious honor.
Rubio, after his appearance in Congress, will hold a closed-door meeting Wednesday with Machado, the State Department said.
Rubio — a Cuban-American and fervent critic of Latin American leftists — had, as a senator, championed Machado’s opposition forces.
The United States and most other Western nations did not recognize Maduro as legitimate after elections that international observers said were full of irregularities.
Rodriguez insisted Sunday that she has had enough of orders from Washington. But she has also worked to encourage US oil investment and said Tuesday that the United States was unblocking sanctioned Venezuela funds.
Rubio to warn Venezuela leader of Maduro’s fate if defiant
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Rubio to warn Venezuela leader of Maduro’s fate if defiant
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to warn Wednesday that oil-rich Venezuela’s leader will suffer the fate of US-deposed predecessor Nicolas Maduro if she fails to comply with US wishes
Italian suspect questioned over Bosnia ‘weekend sniper’ killings
- The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA
ROME: An 80-year-old man suspected of being a “weekend sniper” who paid the Bosnian Serb army to shoot civilians during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo was questioned Monday in Milan, media reported.
The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Lawyer Giovanni Menegon told journalists that his client had answered questions from prosecutors and police and “reaffirmed his complete innocence.”
In October, prosecutors opened an investigation into what Italian media dubbed “weekend snipers” or “war tourists“: mostly wealthy, gun-loving, far-right sympathizers who allegedly gathered in Trieste and were taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they fired on civilians for sport.
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.
Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of €100,000 ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.
The suspect — described by the Italian press as a hunting enthusiast who is nostalgic for Fascism — is said to have boasted publicly about having gone “man hunting.”
Witness statements, particularly from residents of his village, helped investigators to track the suspect, freelance journalist Marianna Maiorino said.
“According to the testimonies, he would tell his friends at the village bar about what he did during the war in the Balkans,” said Maiorino, who researched the allegations and was herself questioned as part of the investigation.
The suspect is “described as a sniper, someone who enjoyed going to Sarajevo to kill people,” she added.
The suspect told local newspaper Messaggero Veneto Sunday he had been to Bosnia during the war, but “for work, not for hunting.” He added that his public statements had been exaggerated and he was “not worried.”
The investigation opened last year followed a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, based on allegations revealed in the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022.
Gavanezzi was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, who filed a complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the same documentary was broadcast.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina prosecutor’s office confirmed on Friday that a special war crimes department was investigating alleged foreign snipers during the siege of Sarajevo.
Bosnian prosecutors requested information from Italian counterparts at the end of last year, while also contacting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, it said. That body performs some of the functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo City Council adopted a decision last month authorizing the current mayor, Samir Avdic, to “join the criminal proceedings” before the Italian courts, in order to support Italian prosecutors.
