The United States managed to successfully capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, during a night attack on the Latin American country’s capital, Caracas.
President Trump announced the development in a post on Truth Social and later shared a photo of a blindfolded Maduro under US arrest on the USS Iwo Jima in US custody.
The image, due to its great impact, showing the president of a country in custody, has since been widely circulated among Internet users and media outlets around the world.
However, one cannot help but look closely and gain a rather more intriguing understanding of the image shared by President Trump by analyzing the intricate nuances reflected in it.
cnn Analyst John Miller, breaking down the now famous image, said that the Venezuelan president was handcuffed, “wearing opaque glasses to prevent him from seeing where he is moving from point A to point B.” This is a fairly common practice often adopted by law enforcement agencies to decrease a detainee’s awareness of their surroundings.
Miller then goes on to describe the dark gray vest around Maduro’s neck, saying it was an inflatable life jacket that a person typically wears on a plane or boat, in case of emergency, to avoid drowning.
This is relevant since the Venezuelan president, after his capture in Caracas by US forces, was taken to the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship deployed in the Caribbean.
“You see a couple of glow-in-the-dark chemical strips. That’s the kind of thing they give to people on board various planes. […] to make sure that if they sink or get in the water, you can inflate them by pulling on the tabs and those things glow in the dark,” Miller said.
In addition, the analyst highlighted the headphones that Maduro was wearing, which, according to him, were “intended to obstruct his hearing so that he could not hear the conversations around him.”
Finally, he drew attention to the background of the image, where he said that the back of the jacket of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent is visible with the authority’s initials visible on it.
“This means that he is detained by US federal authorities,” he said.
Miller’s assessment appears to be supported by the fact that Maduro, since his capture, has been transferred to New York and will be prosecuted on drug and weapons trafficking charges along with his wife.
The Venezuelan president is currently imprisoned in a New York jail awaiting the progress of the legal process against him.
