Maduro trial: ex-Venezuela first lady seeks release from US jail, citing heart problems

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’s 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 will be under 24-hour-a-day armed surveillance and will only be allowed to see visitors approved by the court and federal prosecutors. The home will be monitored by video and her calls will be 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.