US Attorney General Pam Bondi reiterated on Saturday the formal indictment filed in the US in 2020 against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on four counts, including conspiracy to commit narcoterrorism, and also included First Lady Cilia Flores, who was arrested today, in the indictment. along with her husband by Washington in a special operation.

Who is Cilia Flores?

Cilia Flores, captured today along with her husband Nicolas Maduro during a US attack on Venezuela, became the country's first lady in 2013 and "the first combatant of the homeland," as Maduro called this feisty 69-year-old lawyer, a key figure in the regime.

At the end of 2015, as a result of the escalation of tensions between the US and Venezuela due to the military deployment in the Caribbean, very close to the Venezuelan coast, Maduro appointed a team of Chavista leaders to create a new political bureau of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), among whom was Cilia Flores.

The new first lady, born in the state of Cojedes (central Venezuela) in 1956, has been committed to the Bolivarian process for more than three decades, since she joined, along with Maduro, to the genesis movement of Chavismo, the MBR-200.

Her unconditional support for Hugo Chavez solidified in 1992 when she joined the group of lawyers who defended him after the failed coup attempt that the then lieutenant colonel led in February of that year against Carlos Andres Perez, obtaining his pardon from President Rafael Caldera in 1994.

It was during her visits to the prison that she met Maduro, ten years her junior and her partner ever since, with whom she has not married nor had children, but with whom she shares her life, the three children from her first marriage to Congressman Walter Gavidia as well as the son of the current president.

A graduate in Law from the Santa Maria University of Caracas, in 1993 she founded the Bolivarian Circle of Human Rights and enlisted in the Bolivarian Movement MBR-200, founded by Hugo Chavez. Later, in 1997, she participated in the founding of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR),and after its dissolution in 2007, she joined the PSUV. In 2000, with Chavez already as president of Venezuela, Flores was elected to the National Assembly and re-elected in 2005. In August 2006, after Nicolas Maduro left the National Assembly, she was elected Speaker of the House, becoming the first Venezuelan woman to hold that position, which she held until 2011. Her tenure as Speaker of the National Assembly was marked by several controversies, including one related to the decision to prohibit press access to the chamber. She was also accused of nepotism by labor unions that accused her of influencing the hiring of up to forty people, among whom were numerous members of her family.

In February 2012, President Hugo Chavez appointed her Attorney General of the Republic.

After Chavez's death, Maduro's appointment as president on April 19, 2013, made her First Lady or, in Chavista terms, "First Combatant of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela."

In 2015, she was re-elected to the National Assembly, where Chavismo was in the minority for the first time in fifteen years.

And in the elections of August 30, 2017, she was elected to the National Constituent Assembly.

Cilia Flores is accused by the United States of having links to drug trafficking.

In addition, in 2015, two of her nephews were arrested in Haiti by undercover agents of the DEA, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, and transferred to New York, where in 2017 they were sentenced to eighteen years in prison for attempting to smuggle 800 kilos of cocaine into the US

In 2018, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Flores and other high-ranking officials in Maduro's government, such as Diosdado Cabello, to pressure the Venezuelan president.