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Comment by fzeroracer | Hacker News Reader

So correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like a new kind of crime committed by the US? We've been involved in a lot of regime change operations but I can't think of one where we just straight up kidnap a foreign head of state and bring them to the US. I guess Saddam Hussein but that was after we caused the collapse?

Is the goal now to just put Maduro through a televised sham trial as a new cover for the Trump admin?

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> I can't think of one where we just straight up kidnap a foreign head of state and bring them to the US.

I believe Noriega was captured when the US invaded Panama in 1989. But yeah, this is wild (though maybe not unprecedented).

The US has historically captured and executed heads of states in wars, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2006 (executed by the US-administered Iraqi government), and Imperial Japan's Tojo in 1948.

The US extradited, convicted, and imprisoned Honduras' Juan Orlando Hernández, for drug trafficking crimes (though Trump, incongruously, pardoned him in 2025).

Another notable example, the UK arrested Chile's Pinochet in 1998 on a Spanish arrest warrant claiming universal jurisdiction, though no conviction followed from that.

edit: And US Marines captured Grenada's Hudson Austin in 1983, turning him over to Grenada's new government who sentenced him to death, commuted to prison.

edit²: Two other heads of state imprisoned in the US were Alfonso Portillo of Guatemala (extradited to and convicted in US courts in 2014), and Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine (fled willingly to the US, convicted in 2006).

The US has been in a lot of wars/conflicts (even if they were not officially declared) since WWII. Heads of state have not typically been captured. It’s not unprecedented but also not the norm.

It's almost like it's a Republican-Party thing.

It has been presented as a law enforcement action to bring a wanted criminal to justice. What do you mean by “televised sham trial”? Are you suggesting the US manufactured evidence?

Have you considered this is part of a negotiated exit?

It's an illegal invasion and kidnapping of another head of state. Nothing else.

Nobody believes this bullshit about drugs. Just like nobody believed it when they committed war crimes by blowing up innocent guys fishing

It looks that way, yeah. I think it’s too soon to know. It’s possible Maduro wanted out and this was part of a negotiation.

Noriega in Panama, Milosevic in Kosovo/Serbia... it's been patterned. Question is... who's going to do anything about it?

> we just straight up kidnap a foreign head of state

Head of state according to whom?

>Is the goal now to just put Maduro through a televised sham trial as a new cover for the Trump admin?

Would they really need a sham trial?

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