Venezuela: 5 months since Maduro’s overthrow
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's now five months since the United States removed the then Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from Caracas by force to face trial on drug charges. What has changed in the interim in Venezuela?
Also in the programme: The leader of the Cuban Five - Gerardo Hernández - speaks to us about Raúl Castro's 95th birthday, and US pressure for change in Havana; and the German film director Wim Wenders says he's withdrawing his 1975 film Wrong Move because of complaints by the actress Nastassja Kinski who appeared topless in it when she was 13 years old.
(Photo: Members of Venezuelan opposition political parties, public sector workers and students protest demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and an electoral calendar for the presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela, 3 June 2026. Credit: Reuters/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.5 | Hello there, welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.2 | We're coming to live from the BBC Studios in London. |
| 0:16.9 | I'm Sean Lay, and we begin this hour in Venezuela. |
| 0:20.8 | It's now five months to the day since the United States removed the then-President Nicholas Maduro from Caracas by force to face trial in the United States on drug charges. |
| 0:35.6 | Oh, no. |
| 0:38.3 | Well, it was an audacious operation. Oh, no. Look that. |
| 0:40.1 | While it was an audacious operation executed in the dead of night, it woke Venezuela |
| 0:45.3 | like that woman in Caracas as the bombing continued. |
| 0:48.9 | The US attacked targets in the capital as special forces over around the compound where |
| 0:53.3 | the president was sleeping, |
| 0:54.7 | capturing both him and his wife Celia Flores. |
| 0:57.5 | I was presenting news hour on that Saturday morning, the 3rd of January, as the news broke. |
| 1:02.1 | Here's a flavour of what people were saying to us then. |
| 1:04.8 | I wake up to a huge bang. |
| 1:07.2 | I live very close to the air base inside the city of Caracas. |
| 1:11.3 | My heart was racing, my body was shaking, it was a huge noise. |
| 1:17.5 | I could hear the airplanes flying around the city, at least for an hour after the explosions. |
| 1:24.4 | But for now, the whole city is in silence, but everyone is awake. The feeling is of |
| 1:30.9 | liberation, of happiness. I'm very excited, very moved, because this 26 years of |
| 1:38.1 | dictatorship has been very, very horrible for the Venezuelan population. This regime declare war against the population. |
| 1:47.5 | They've killed so many people. |
... |
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