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Associated Press

Venezuela’s former first lady wants to be let out of jail while she and her husband await trial on US drug-trafficking charges.
Cilia Flores, the wife of ex-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, “deserves the opportunity to await her trial while on home confinement” while dealing with a heart condition that has only got worse since she has been in jail, her lawyers wrote in court papers filed on Wednesday.
The lawyers, Mark Donnelly and Andres Sanchez, asked a judge to allow her to leave a Brooklyn federal jail for a home within the Manhattan federal court district where she and Maduro are scheduled to stand trial next June.
There, the lawyers said, she would be under 24-hour-a-day armed surveillance and would only be allowed to see visitors approved by the court and federal prosecutors. The home would be monitored by video and her calls recorded, the lawyers said.
Federal prosecutors have yet to file a response. A spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment. The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, has yet to rule on Flores’ request.
Flores, 69, and Maduro, 63, have been held at a Brooklyn jail since US forces seized them from their Caracas home in a middle-of-the-night raid in early January and brought them to New York City.

Both have pleaded not guilty to charges alleging that they were part of a conspiracy to send cocaine into the US. In a separate court filing, they recently asked that their indictment be dismissed on the grounds that they have immunity as the leader and first lady of a foreign country.
Flores’ lawyers said that she has lived for years with a mitral valve prolapse but has not received a monthly injection she needs to manage the ailment since her arrest and subsequent incarceration at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn.
Instead, Donnelly and Sanchez said, she has been prescribed baby aspirin, a statin, diltiazem and nitroglycerine as needed for chest pains. She has continually suffered from reflux and gastritis, has lost two molars and shed more than 11.3kg (25 pounds).
Flores has been advised by doctors that she should undergo cardiac catheterisation, which could lead to further heart procedures, her lawyers said. If that happens, they said, she “will need adequate time to recover from any procedures in a setting conducive to restoring her health”.
Staff at the jail “have been extremely respectful toward her and her husband” and Flores “does not dispute that she has received excellent care from medical professionals” at the jail and hospital, Donnelly and Sanchez said.
But, they argued, “a detention centre lacks the conditions needed for such a recovery”.


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Lawyers request home confinement in New York for former Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores ahead of June trial


Lawyers request home confinement in New York for former Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores ahead of June trial.


Venezuela

Nicolas Maduro

Drugs

United States

Maduro’s wife seeks release from US jail, citing worsening heart condition

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Lawyers request home confinement in New York for former Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores ahead of June trial

Lawyers request home confinement in New York for former Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores ahead of June trial