The abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from the presidential palace in Caracas by a US Delta Force unit, acting on direct orders from Donald Trump, and their transfer from their bedroom to a military base in New York in preparation for trial before a US court, is neither a passing incident nor one to be mocked or trivialised.

It is a fully fledged political and legal crime.

Every principle of international law, every notion of state sovereignty, and every remaining pillar of the post–Second World War international order has been trampled upon without hesitation. What the world is witnessing is not merely an abuse of power, but the public demolition of the very framework that was meant to restrain it.

This global order did not collapse overnight; it has been corroding for years.

Its terminal decline became unmistakable during the genocide in Gaza, when international court rulings were openly ignored, dismissed, and ridiculed without consequence. The supposed guardians of international law stood paralysed, while mass killing was normalised and accountability reduced to empty statements. The abduction of a sitting head of state from his own palace is not an aberration, it is the final act in a long process of........

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