No bail for alleged female drug trafficker

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MIAMI, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- A U.S. judge refused Tuesday to grant bail for an alleged Mexican drug trafficker called the "queen of queens" in a narcocorrida drug ballad.

Sandra Avila Beltran was extradited this week to Miami, where she is scheduled to be tried for allegedly running a major cocaine operation, The Miami Herald reported.

Avila, 51, once known for her fashionable clothes and her long dark hair, wore prison khaki at the hearing. She was chained at the hands and feet.

Magistrate Judge Patrick White said Avila's lawyers made no case for bail.

"I haven't heard any argument that she would stay put if released on bond," he said.

Investigators say Avila and a Colombian drug lord were lovers and business partners, working on a major cocaine deal.

"She is very Cleopatra-ish, like the Queen of the Nile," Miami criminal defense attorney Lilly Ann Sanchez, who represented two defendants in the same case, told the Herald. "She was able to maneuver her way in a man's world and use the fact that she was a woman to her advantage in more ways than one."

Mexican narcocorridos called Avila "queen of the queens" and "queen of the Pacific."

"The more beautiful the rose, the sharper the thorns," Los Tucanes de Tijuana said of her.