She was the brains, Maduro was the brawn': Cilia Flores' role in Venezuela

"But Maduro himself and others close to the couple agree that she was always far more than that. Before her rendition to New York, Flores wielded power comparable with and at times greater than that of other figures from the regime, including Delcy Rodriguez, the former vice-president who is now the country's acting leader. Maduro used to say that Flores was not the first lady but the first combatant, reflecting the frontline role she occupied within the regime."

"The two, who met in a Venezuelan prison while visiting their political mentor Hugo Chavez in the 1990s, are now being held in a New York jail and face US charges of narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Flores is Maduro's wife, first and foremost, but really more: she's his key partner, one of his closest confidants and, in large part, helped his rise into politics, said Eva Golinger, a US lawyer and writer who met the couple several times while acting as an adviser to Chavez she would later break with him and write The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela."

"When they met, Maduro was a bus driver and union leader, while Flores, six years his senior, was a lawyer who was part of the legal team seeking to free Chavez, then a lieutenant colonel, who had been jailed for his part in an attempted coup against Carlos Andres Perez, the president, in 1992. After Chavez was released, the couple threw themselves fully into the political movement that would later become known as Chavismo."

Before pleading not guilty at her first court hearing after she and her husband, Nicolas Maduro, were captured by US special forces, Cilia Flores declared in Spanish that she is first lady of the Republic of Venezuela. Flores wielded power comparable with, and at times greater than, other senior regime figures such as Delcy Rodriguez. Maduro described her as the "first combatant," reflecting a frontline role. The couple met while visiting Hugo Chavez in prison in the 1990s, later helping build Chavismo. Both are held in New York and face US charges of narco-terrorism and drug trafficking.

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