Washington: President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are currently aboard a US warship and will face prosecution in New York, following what he described as a successful American operation to capture the Venezuelan leader and fly him out of the country.

Speaking in an interview with Fox News hours after announcing the capture, Trump said Washington would now play a decisive role in determining Venezuela’s future leadership.

“We’ll be involved in it very much,” Trump said, referring to decisions about who governs the South American nation next. “We can’t take a chance in letting somebody else run and just take over what he left, or left off.”

The US president did not specify where the warship was located or when Maduro would be transferred to the United States, but indicated that legal proceedings would take place in New York.

In Caracas, the Venezuelan government accused the United States of carrying out a military assault and kidnapping the country’s leadership. Nahum Fernández, a senior ruling party leader, told The Associated Press that Maduro and Flores were at their residence inside the Ft. Tiuna military complex when the operation took place.

“That’s where they bombed,” Fernández said. “And there, they carried out what we could call a kidnapping of the president and the first lady of the country.”