Trump’s Maduro raid was ‘right thing to do,’ says UK Tory chief

LONDON — Kemi Badenoch on Tuesday praised the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. troops as the moral course of action claiming the Venezuelan president ran a “gangster state.”

Britain’s opposition leader, who heads up the center-right Conservatives, said her experience growing up under a dictatorship in Nigeria made her sympathetic to those celebrating the removal of Maduro.

“What’s happened is quite extraordinary, but I understand why America has done it,” Badenoch told the BBC.

“Where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally, I do think it was the right thing to do,” she said.

Badenoch was born in the U.K. in 1980, but grew up in Nigeria. She returned to the U.K. aged 16 in 1996.

“I am different from other party leaders and other people in the House of Commons,” she said. “I grew up under a military dictatorship, so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge.”

Badenoch, whose Conservative party has been closely aligned with the Republicans for decades, did say Maduro’s capture raises “serious questions about the rules based order.”

“We act as if it is still 1995 where we’re living off the peace dividend of the Cold War and World War Two,” she said. “The world has changed.”

The Tory leader echoed U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Greenland warning to Donald Trump after the U.S. president suggested the Arctic territory is required for U.S. security.

“It is not for sale. What happens in Greenland is up to Denmark and the people of Greenland,” Badenoch said.

The deposed Venezuelan leader and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty in New York Monday to drug trafficking charges. Their next court date is set for March 17.