United Kingdom’s Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has said that the United States’ military action to remove Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro was the right decision on moral grounds, even though the legal basis for the operation remains unclear.

Speaking to the BBC, Badenoch said she does not understand the legal justification for United States President Donald Trump’s decision to remove Maduro but described the Venezuelan leader as presiding over a “brutal regime,” adding that she is “glad he’s gone.”

She, however, warned that the operation raised serious concerns about the rules-based international order.

The UK government has so far avoided directly criticising the US action or stating whether it breached international law, instead maintaining that Maduro was an “illegitimate president.”

However, several Labour MPs and opposition parties, including the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and the SNP, have called on the government to condemn the operation and describe it as illegal.

Badenoch, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, described the US intervention as “extraordinary” but said she understood why it was carried out.

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

The Conservative leader, who spent part of her childhood in Nigeria before returning to the UK at the age of 16, said her upbringing under military rule shaped her views on authoritarian leadership.

“I grew up under a military dictatorship, so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge.”

She also distinguished the situation in Venezuela from President Trump’s comments on Greenland, saying it was right to oppose any US intervention there.

“There is a big difference between democratic states” and the “gangster state in Venezuela”.

“What happens in Greenland is up to Denmark and the people of Greenland,” she added.

Trump has in recent days renewed his threats to annex Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory with a strategic location and rich mineral resources, arguing that the move is necessary for US national security. The UK has issued a joint statement alongside France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark, insisting that decisions concerning Greenland’s future rest solely with Denmark and the people of Greenland.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government’s stance on Greenland differed from Venezuela because Denmark is a member of NATO and questioning Greenland’s future was not in the UK’s national security interests. He also defended the prime minister’s response to developments in Venezuela, saying it was guided by national interest and concern for the Venezuelan people.

“I appreciate there are others who have been more strident and have been more critical of the United States,” he said.

“The prime minister has a different responsibility, and he is choosing his words carefully and wisely to try and influence how events unfold from here on.”

Critics of the government’s approach, including Labour MP Emily Thornberry, chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, have argued that the US action risks emboldening Russia and China and that the UK should clearly state that the operation breached international law.

In a statement to the House of Commons on Monday evening, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said she had reminded US Secretary of State Marco Rubio of his obligations under international law, while reiterating that it was for the US to set out the legal basis for its actions.

Maduro and his wife were seized in Caracas on Saturday during a US military operation that also included strikes on military bases across the country. They were taken to New York, where they have been charged with weapons and drug-related offences over allegations that they enriched themselves through a violent crime ring smuggling cocaine into the US.

Maduro has long rejected the allegations as a pretext to force him from power, and both he and his wife have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trump has vowed to “run the country” until a “proper” transition of power takes place, with Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez sworn in as interim president.