Caracas (theassemblymedia.com) — US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Thursday denied Venezuelan congresswoman Cilia Flores’ request for pretrial conditional release on health grounds, according to Manhattan federal court papers.
Flores’ defense team had requested house arrest with 24-hour private security to address chronic health issues that they said had worsened while she was detained in the general population at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Her lawyers also argued that the 69-year-old posed no danger to society and was not a flight risk.
In a request filed in early September, Flores’ attorneys said she may have suffered a minor heart attack on July 29, when she experienced intense pressure in her chest and a lack of oxygen. However, no lab tests or echocardiograms were performed, leaving the extent of any coronary damage unclear.
Judge Hellerstein claimed that Flores could undergo catheterization to check for coronary artery disease while in prison. The defense argued that the procedure would likely lead to more invasive surgery, which would require adequate time and a setting conducive to her recovery, but the house arrest request was ultimately denied.
Since the episode in July, Flores has experienced lightheadedness, dizziness, shortness of breath, and excessive fatigue. The medical team at the Brooklyn prison has warned that she is at risk of a life-threatening, sudden cardiac attack if she is not treated in time. Flores will turn 70 on October 15, and her trial is scheduled for June 2027.
At Thursday’s hearing, Flores’ attorneys said she had lost at least 25 pounds (about 11 kilograms) and two molars since her imprisonment in early January.
On January 3, Flores and her husband, democratically-elected President Nicolás Maduro, were abducted from their home in Caracas during a US military intervention. The operation killed over 100 people, the majority part of Maduro’s security ring. The couple was forcefully transferred to the United States on charges related to a conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons offenses. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The case against the presidential couple is based on a superseding indictment issued by the US Department of Justice shortly after their abduction. The charges are based on years-long accusations from US officials, and no public evidence has ever been presented. According to international law scholars and institutions, Washington violated the immunity of a sitting head of state, Venezuela’s state sovereignty, and the UN Charter.
At the time of the abduction, Flores was recovering from a total hysterectomy performed in November 2025, which her attorneys have explained must have been known by Washington given that US officials have declared that they monitored the couples’ daily lives for months. Flores’ captors caused her significant forehead lesions that required some 20 stitches.
Torture allegations
Although Thursday’s hearing was meant to address Flores’ health condition and pre-trial release, the audience began with the prosecution revealing a superseding indictment accusing the presidential couple of alleged conspiracy to commit torture.
The newly unsealed charging document alleges that President Maduro, Flores and other Venezuelan officials “presided over a system of repression that relied on violence against political opposition, arbitrary detention, and the torture of detainees, including United States citizens.”
It mentions three Americans who were allegedly tortured while jailed in Venezuela. They include former US Marine Corporal Matthew Heath, arrested in September 2020 after being caught near the country’s largest oil-refinery complex in what Caracas described as a “stakeout,” and Osman Khan, detained while entering Venezuela in early 2022. Both men were released in an October 2022 prisoner swap, along with five US oil executives who had been jailed in 2017 and sentenced in 2020 on corruption charges related to embezzlement, money laundering and conspiracy at PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo.
In January 2025, Heath and Khan sued President Maduro and 16 other defendants in federal court, alleging human rights abuses.
The prosecution focused its new indictment on Flores, claiming she “helped develop this system of repression and ordered that individuals be tortured to protect her family members’ illegal activities”. The congresswoman’ lawyers said they hadn’t yet had time to review the new allegations, while Maduro’s attorney Barry Pollack denied the charges.
The revised indictment against the presidential couple appears to draw partly on testimony from General Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, Venezuela’s former intelligence chief, who defected in 2019 and backed the US-supported effort to install an unelected opposition “interim government.” The Maduro government expelled Carvajal from the military and accused him of treason. He fled Venezuela, was arrested in Spain in 2021 and extradited to the United States in 2023. In 2025, he pleaded guilty in New York to drug-trafficking charges. His sentencing was postponed as he cooperated with US prosecutors in building a case against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials.
New indictment hijacked Flores’s bid for house arrest
According to activist Sabrina Mendoza, who attended Thursday’s hearing, Judge Hellerstein initially appeared inclined to grant the defense’s request for Cilia Flores’s pretrial release. But before he could rule, prosecutors raised new allegations against Flores and Nicolás Maduro.
“Neither the judge nor Cilia’s defense team had read [the indictment] in full, because the documents containing those allegations were delivered at 8:00 a.m.,” Mendoza wrote on social media, alongside a drawing she made of Flores in court. Mendoza said the graphic allegations of torture were unrelated to the hearing and “were used as a means of coercion to convince the judge not to grant Cilia house arrest.”
Mendoza said attendees heard Hellerstein respond, “This sounds very serious,” after hearing the new allegations—which, she said, he was learning about for the first time and which had not yet been supported by evidence presented in court.
Mendoza also said Flores had not refused surgery. Rather, she had concerns about “the lack of both legal and medical transparency.” Mendoza added that the judge and prosecution were trying to pressure Flores to consent to a catheterization procedure without guarantees about her recovery.
“Despite all these aggressions, we saw the First Combatant standing firm, with her head held high and deeply engaged in her case, constantly consulting with her lawyers. She greeted and smiled at us, and never appeared downcast or defeated,” Mendoza wrote.
A hearing on whether to dismiss the charges against the presidential couple on sovereign-immunity grounds is scheduled for November 17.