Prosecutors oppose bail, citing extreme risk of flight and danger to public

Cilia Flores, the wife of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, was set to return to a New York federal courtroom on Thursday, where her attorneys were scheduled to urge a judge to free her from jail and place her under house arrest because of heart problems. The 69-year-old has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since early January, when US forces seized her and her husband from their Caracas home during a middle-of-the-night raid.

The Trump administration has defended the operation that captured Maduro as a “surgical law enforcement operation.” Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and characterized his capture as a kidnapping.

Both Flores and Maduro have pleaded not guilty in a criminal case first brought six years ago against them and numerous alleged co-conspirators. They face potential life sentences if convicted of participating in a conspiracy to send cocaine into the United States. Their attorneys have moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that the couple has immunity as the leader and first lady of a foreign country.

In court filings, Flores’s lawyers wrote that her medical needs cannot be effectively treated at the Brooklyn detention facility and asked that she instead be permitted to live under 24-hour guard at a New York residence. They said she lost 25 pounds (11 kilograms) while imprisoned, suffered “lingering lightheadedness, dizziness and shortness of breath,” and had been told she might need heart surgery. Her attorneys also said she had possibly suffered a minor heart attack in July and suffered permanent scarring when she was “thrown against a wall or dresser” during the military action that led to her capture.

Prosecutors opposed the request, writing in court papers that Flores would pose an “extreme risk of flight and danger to the public” if released. They also said she had been transported from jail to a local hospital for medical care when treatment was required.

Her lawyers argued Flores was no flight risk because she was “intent on supporting her husband with her constant presence.”

Maduro served as Venezuela’s president from 2013 until his capture by US forces in January. Flores is charged with participating in the cocaine-importation conspiracy alongside him.