Venezuela’s defence minister has accused the United States of using the country as a “weapons laboratory” during the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3.Vladimir Padrino Lopez said last week that the US had used Venezuela as a testing ground for “advanced military technologies” that rely on artificial intelligence and weaponry never used before, according to the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal.On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told the New York Post that US forces had indeed used a weapon he referred to as “the discombobulator”.“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” he said, adding that the weapon “made equipment not work” during the operation.Details of the US military mission to abduct Maduro have not been made public, but the US has been known to use weapons to disorient soldiers and guards or disable equipment and infrastructure in the past.Here is what we know:What has the Venezuelan defence minister said?On January 16, Padrino Lopez said 47 Venezuelan soldiers had been killed during the US attack on Caracas. Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them providing protection to Maduro, were also killed.Then last week, he made the “weapons laboratory” accusations and was quoted by El Universal as saying: “The president of the United States admitted that they had used weapons that had never been used on battlefields, weapons that no one in the world possessed. They used that technology against the Venezuelan people on January 3, 2026.” Advertisement He appeared to be r …
