US indicts Venezuelan President Maduro and other top leaders for drug trafficking

The United States has chargedVenezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and several top aides on Thursday for "narco-terrorism" and offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his capture.

Unveilingthe indictment, the attorney general, William Barr, said the Venezuelan leadership collaborated with a dissident faction of the former Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, operating on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, which Barr described as an ''extremely violent terrorist organization''.

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''We estimate that somewhere between 200 and 250 metric tons of cocaine are shipped out of Venezuela by these routes,''Barr said. ''Those 250 metric tons equate to 30 millionlethal doses.''

"It's time to call out this regime for what it is," he added. "The Maduro regime is awash in corruption and criminality."

Alongside Maduro, Venezuela’s vice-president for the economy, Venezuela’s defence minister, and the supreme court’s chief justice are among the list of 15 current and former officials who have been indicted.

The Justice Department accused Maduro of leading a cocaine-trafficking gang called "The Cartel of the Suns" that shipped hundreds of tons of narcotics into the US over two decades, earning hundreds of millions of dollars.