\n<\/p>\n
In the early hours of January 3, the United States\u2019 Delta Force abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from the presidential residence in the capital, Caracas.<\/p>\n
The operation, which was paired with attacks on the Venezuelan capital that killed at least 40 people, according to Venezuelan officials, extracted the country\u2019s first couple to New York in the US, where they are expected to be put on trial as early as Monday.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But who is Cilia Flores, Venezuela\u2019s so-called \u201cfirst combatant\u201d?<\/p>\n Flores, 69, was born on October 15, 1956, in Tinaquillo in central Venezuela. She grew up in areas of western Caracas that CNN has described as \u201cworking-class neighbourhoods\u201d.<\/p>\n She graduated from Universidad Santa Maria in Caracas as a lawyer specialising in labour and criminal law. Her rise to prominence came when she led the team that provided legal assistance to military leader Hugo Chavez in 1992, after he attempted to overthrow then-Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez.<\/p>\n Flores reportedly helped secure Chavez\u2019s release from prison in 1994, setting up his eventual successful run for president in 1999.<\/p>\n She would become an important member of the Chavismo movement, named for Chavez. It was through the Chavismo movement that she met her future husband, Maduro, who is 63 and calls her \u201cCilita\u201d. The two have been partners for more than three decades.<\/p>\n She has three children from a previous marriage.<\/p>\n Flores\u2019s rise to fame came not solely through her position as Maduro\u2019s partner. In fact, she built her own political standing before becoming Venezuela\u2019s \u201cfirst combatant\u201d, the Chavismo term used instead of \u201cfirst lady\u201d.<\/p>\n In 1999, Chavez was elected president. A year later, in 2000, Flores was elected to Venezuela\u2019s National Assembly, the federal legislature, representing Cojedes, her home state.<\/p>\n She was re-elected in 2005, and in 2006, she succeeded Maduro to become the first woman to preside over Venezuela\u2019s parliament.<\/p>\n In 2009, Flores became the second vice president of Chavez\u2019s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and in 2012, Chavez appointed her attorney general.<\/p>\n After the death of Chavez in 2013, Maduro succeeded him by winning an election against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. In July 2013, Maduro and Flores married after more than two decades together.<\/p>\n Her new position as \u201cfirst combatant\u201d saw Flores remove herself from the limelight and begin to work behind the scenes.<\/p>\n However, in 2017, she returned to politics after she was elected to the Constituent Assembly, a group that was elected to draft a new Venezuelan constitution. In 2021, she was elected once again to the National Assembly.<\/p>\n At the time of her abduction, she was still serving as a deputy in the National Assembly.<\/p>\n Inside Venezuela, she has been accused of nepotism by appointing close family members to important political positions.<\/p>\n Flores\u2019s role as part of Maduro\u2019s inner circle has brought international repercussions as well. She was sanctioned by the US and Canadian authorities in 2018 after the Organization of American States said the Maduro government had committed crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n After her abduction on Saturday, she is expected to appear with Maduro in a New York court, possibly as early as Monday. While Maduro was seen exiting a plane in the US, Flores was not.<\/p>\n She has been indicted in New York\u2019s Southern District, with US Attorney General Pam Bondi issuing her charges that mirror those against Maduro, including \u201cNarco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States\u201d, according to a post on X by Bondi.<\/p>\n As for Flores, she is \u201caccused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between \u2018a large-scale drug trafficker\u2019 and the director of Venezuela\u2019s National Anti-Drug Office\u201d, according to the newspaper The Guardian.<\/p>\n Flores\u2019s nephews were previously arrested in the US and, in 2017, were sentenced to 18 years in prison for conspiring to traffic cocaine into the US. They were released in 2022 as part of a prison swap with Venezuela for seven imprisoned US citizens.<\/p>\n The US claims that Flores\u2019s nephews were caught on recordings that prove they intended to send hundreds of kilograms of cocaine to the US from Maduro\u2019s presidential hangar in Venezuela.<\/p>\n The US has attacked boats carrying Venezuelan nationals at least 30 times in recent months, killing more than 100 people.<\/p>\n It claims the boats were carrying drug smugglers, even though the Trump administration has not provided public evidence that there were drugs on board the boats, that they were US-bound, or that the victims of the attacks belonged to banned organisations, despite US claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the early hours of January 3, the United States\u2019 Delta Force abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from the presidential residence in the capital, Caracas. The operation, which was paired with attacks on the Venezuelan capital that killed at least 40 people, according to Venezuelan officials, extracted the country\u2019s first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Early life<\/h2>\n
Political career<\/h2>\n
Capture and charges<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"