UK sheds 'no tears' for end of Maduro’s rule, Cooper tells MPs

The foreign secretary made the remarks in the Commons after the ousted Venezuelan president and his wife Cilia Flores appeared in a New York on Monday after being seized from their home in Caracas by the US military.

Cooper said the UK is in "close contact with our international partners" on the situation in the South American nation, after Donald Trump said the US would "run" the country in the interim.

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After confirming the UK was not involved in the US operation, Cooper added that Britons should "be under no illusion as to the nature of the Maduro regime".

"A once functioning democracy has become a hub for very dangerous, organised criminal gangs," she told MPs.

Cooper then went on to point out that President Maduro had led the country into "economic ruin", with an 80 per cent fall in the nation's GDP.

She also raised that UN investigators are looking into "a pattern of arbitrary detentions, tortures and killings".

The 2024 general election results in the country have never been published, the minister said, while there is evidence of state security forces firing on protesters.

"These are the hallmarks of a regime that clings to power through fear, coercion and violence, not through democratic consent," Cooper said.

"We can shed no tears for the end of Maduro's rule."

The UK government has yet to condemn President Trump over the capture of Maduro, a move which has angered a large number of Labour MPs.

Cooper said that she "raised the importance of complying with international law" with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Former party leader Jeremy Corbyn warned the American leader that "things are going to spiral out of control very quickly" if US troops remain on the ground in Venezuela.

"Does Trump want to be the President, despite everything he said, who's bringing back US soldiers in body bags from a war that nobody wanted in, in a country that nobody hated?" the Your Party MP told LBC's Andrew Marr.

"Are we actually moving into the sort of 1984 Orwell scenario, where there's an eternal war between three big powers, USA , China, Russia. Because Trump's security document actually leaves China and Russia out of the equation."

Scotland's First Minister also told Marr that the US intervention in Venezuela has set a "very dangerous precedent".

"I think the moment and the necessity right now is for the international community to recognise the dangers that it faces because of the decline in adherence to the rules-based system (and) the need to reassert that rules-based system to protect the stability that we've all enjoyed in the post-World War period," he said.

In his first court appearance on Monday, Maduro told the judge: "I am not guilty, I am a decent man, I am still the president of my country."

He and his wife pleaded not guilty to the drug and weapons charges, which carry the death penalty if convicted.

Their next court appearance will be on March 17.