In early January 2026, when Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, made their first court appearances in the US when he was captured, an image circulated online that users alleged (archived) showed Flores in court with a bandaged head and a black eye.
American forces got his hands on Maduro and Flores during an overnight mission in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, on January 3. The operation would have left dozens of people Venezuelan and Cuban dead officers. According to the Associated Press, US officials they were holding Maduro and Flores at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York while awaiting trial.
An X user who shared the image, which showed a woman with dark brown hair and glasses wearing a black blazer and brown top sitting in front of a microphone, wrote: “Those calling for the US to protect women’s rights should take note of this image. If the same thing happened to Donald Trump’s wife, human rights activists around the world would have reacted strongly.”
(X user @YasirAgha1234)
The image also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), and LinkedIn (archived). Snopes readers wrote in, asking if it actually showed Maduro’s wife.
The woman in the picture was not Flores, as evidenced by the authentic photos from the capture of the Venezuelan first lady by the reputable photo agency Getty Images and the sketches from the first appearance of her and Maduro on January 5, 2026. We could not definitively determine whether the image was digitally edited or generated with artificial intelligence. For this reason, we have left this claim unrated.
According to the authentic photos, Flores did not wear glasses and had light blonde hair. Flores has had blonde hair since at least 2019, according to Getty Images. She and Maduro both wore what appeared to be prison garb during the Jan. 5 appearance, consisting of a blue T-shirt over an orange inner layer.
According to the Associated Press, Flores had bandages “on her forehead and right temple” during her Jan. 5 court appearance, with her attorney Mark Donnelly saying she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture. The alleged photo of Flores showed her with bandages on her left temple. Court sketches did not show Flores with a black eye as seen in the image that falsely claimed to depict her.
Snopes could not determine whether the image in question was authentic, meaning it was not created or edited using artificial intelligence. Google’s Gemini AI language model said it didn’t detect SynthID — an invisible watermark that Google embeds in content created by its generative AI consumer products — pictured. Online AI detectors sight and Moderation in the hive both deemed the image unlikely to have been generated by AI. Such detectors are not always completely reliable.
The image appears to show the woman wearing two different earrings – a hoop in her right ear and a small gold pendant dangling from her left. Such inconsistencies may indicate the use of AI.
Some versions of the image had a watermark identical (archived) to the one used by Samira Shuja, an Afghan journalist in the UK Snopes could not find the image on Shuja’s various social networks. I have reached out to Shuja to ask about the image and await a response. We’ve also reached out to an X user who shared a first instance of the image, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
Maduro and Flores face federal drug-trafficking charges in the US. According to a 25-page indictment, the two are accused of ordering kidnappings, beatings and killings of people who owed them drug money.
Sources:
“The AI Image Detector. Detect AI-generated environments at scale”. Sightengine, https://sightengine.com/detect-ai-generated-images. Accessed 8 January 2026.
“At least 24 Venezuelan security officers killed in Maduro capture, his military says”. AP News, https://apnews.com/live/us-venezuela-trump-maduro-updates-01-06-2026. Accessed 8 January 2026.
“Cilia Flores is seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan…” Getty Images, 5 January 2026, https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/cilia-flores-is-seen-in-handcuffs-after-landing-at-a-news-photo/2254194608.
COTO, DÁNICA and ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ. “Cuba details 32 officers killed in US attack on Venezuela, as US defends attack”. AP News, 6 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/cubans-killed-venezuela-strike-us-oas-a8d8fcbe3e825979c5d3171f9b076a85.
Moderation in the hive. https://hivemoderation.com/ai-generated-content-detection. Accessed 8 January 2026.
KINNARD, MEG, and MICHELLE L. PRICE. “How the US Captured Venezuelan Leader Nicolás Maduro”. AP News, 3 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/trump-maduro-venezuela-presidential-palace-blowtorches-7969152ae48510003fe9cbde92f3c102.
“Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are seen in handcuffs…” Getty Images, January 5, 2026, https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/nicolas-maduro-and-his-wife-cilia-flores-are-seen-in-news-photo/225741948
SETH, ANIKA ARORA. “US Impeaches Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro”. AP News, 3 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/interactive/us-indicts-venezuela-maduro/.
SISAK, MICHAEL R., et al. “Maduro says ‘I was captured’ as he pleads not guilty to drug-trafficking charges.” AP News, 5 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/maduro-venezuela-trump-criminal-case-131f59e517cc8314a53c8dace230d328.
SISAK, MICHAEL R., and LARRY NEUMEISTER. “After capture and removal, Venezuela’s Maduro is held at Notorious Brooklyn Jail”. AP News, 4 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/maduro-federal-prisons-jails-mdc-brooklyn-f985d47a1aa82ac330aa8a2e004f3db2.
“SynthID”. Google DeepMind, https://deepmind.google/models/synthid/. Accessed 8 January 2026.