Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores received a court order granted by the US federal judge for the Southern District of New York, Alvin Hellerstein, ordering the sealing of her medical records that detail the health issues from which she has suffered since her kidnapping by US forces on January 3, 2026. The measure was granted on Thursday, September 10, a day after the Venezuelan first lady requested her pretrial release for health reasons.
“Defendant Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro (“Ms. Flores”) filed an application for pretrial release and an accompanying motion to seal Exhibit C of the application, which contains her personal medical records. The memorandum of law explaining Ms. Flores’ reasons for seeking pretrial release remains unsealed and unredacted, and Ms. Flores limitedly seeks to seal her actual medical records contained in Exhibit C,” states the document signed by the judge and reported on the website courtlistener.com.
“Ms. Flores’ privacy interest in sealing her personal medical records supersedes the presumption of public access as it relates to this motion,” the document adds. “Therefore, Ms. Flores’ motion to seal Exhibit C is granted. The Clerk of Court shall terminate ECF No. 328.”
Venezuelan First Lady and National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores requested pretrial release for health reasons. This was recorded in a document submitted by her defense attorney Mark Donnelly before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who is overseeing the case of the Venezuelan presidential couple’s kidnapping by the United States on January 3, 2026, when US troops bombed areas of central Venezuela and killed over 100 people.
The document titled “Memorandum of Law in Support of Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro’s Application for Pretrial Release” was submitted on September 9 and consists of 23 pages, describing the current health condition of the parliamentarian.
“Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro is the First Lady of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and deserves the opportunity to await her trial while on home confinement, recovering from invasive heart surgery,” the memorandum notes on page 6. ” Prior to the United States’ military invasion of Venezuela, Ms. Flores de Maduro was physically healthy and took no ongoing medication, other than a monthly injection to help control her mitral valve prolapse. Now she is prescribed four medications, maintains nitroglycerin by her side in the event of a potential heart attack, and grapples with the continued medical advice suggesting coronary exploration and surgery.”
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Referring to her health condition explained in detail in the memorandum, the defense underscored that “she has lost significant weight, suffers from ongoing reflux and gastritis, is unable to sleep for significant periods of time, and suffers tachycardia when startled.”
According to Flores’s defense, she “must be in a situation to attend to her continuously deteriorating health.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
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