CARACAS, Venezuela– Spain extradited the former head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, to the United States on Wednesday after a Spanish high court purchased his instant extradition on Tuesday.
Carvajal’s departure takes place after the European Court of Human being Rights denied his final efforts to avoid extradition, the end of a lengthy process that started with his initial arrest in 2019 and included many appeals, his disappearance, and recapture in 2021.
Carvajal, a retired general of Venezuela’s armed forces, deals with multiple narco-terrorism charges after being arraigned by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) in 2020, 2019, and 2011. In 2014, the Southern District of Florida likewise charged him with conspiracy to import cocaine. Some of the charges versus Carvajal include claims of having actually personally coordinated a U.S-bound shipment of 5.6 tons of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico.
He is expected to arrive in New York on Wednesday, according to details provided to Reuters by his lawyer, Zach Margulis-Ohnuma.
The Venezuelan ex-spymaster served as director of the country’s Military Intelligence Directorate (DGIM) in between 2004 and 2011 during the rule of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez. Carvajal would then repeat the role under socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in between April 2013 and January 2014, after which Maduro designated him Consul General of Venezuela in Aruba. Carvajal was later on elected to serve as a lawmaker for the judgment United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in 2016.
Carvajal was very first sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2008 under the administration of previous President George W. Bush for apparently supplying assistance to the narcotic trafficking activities of the Marxist Revolutionary Army of Colombia (FARC) terrorist company.
The United States, throughout the administration of previous President Donald Trump, released a bounty of approximately $10 million for details resulting in Carvajal’s arrest and/or conviction.
The United States has actually accused Carvajal of being a leading figure of the Cartel of the Suns, a global drug trafficking operation composed of high-ranking Venezuelan authorities and FARC members. Carvajal is also implicated of having conspired with others to assist FARC in transporting big cocaine deliveries, providing heavily armed security to secure FARC cocaine deliveries, supplying FARC with military-grade weapons, and interfering in drug-trafficking investigations.The ex-spymaster was
initially jailed in Spain in April 2019. Carvajal had actually entered the European nation using a false Venezuelan passport under the alias of “José Mourinho.”
Carvajal got away to Spain after claiming to have actually broken ranks with Nicolás Maduro, expressing support for previous interim President Juan Guaidó in February 2019. Maduro accused him of treason and eliminated him from the Venezuelan militaries.
The United States requested his extradition after Carvajal’s arrest, but the request was turned down by a Spanish court in September 2019 on the grounds that Washington sought his transfer for “simply political” reasons.
The rejection was appealed and reversed shortly afterward but Carvajal managed to get away Spain and disappear by then. At the time, Spanish authorities thought that Carvajal, then considered a fugitive, left the country using another incorrect identity.
Carvajal stayed a fugitive for nearly 2 years till he was captured in an apartment building in Madrid in September 2021 at the end of a cops raid. Carvajal was apparently able to evade arrest for almost 2 years through a complex series of plans including wigs, phony mustaches, plastic surgery, and relocating to a brand-new safe house every three months.
Ever since, Carvajal and his legal representatives carried out several attract hold off his extradition to the United States that included asking for asylum in Spain on 2 occasions.
Prior to his arrest in Spain. Carvajal was detained in Aruba throughout his time as consul basic on July 24, 2014. At the time of his arrest, the Dutch federal government had not yet officially accepted Carvajal’s designation as consul basic and hence claimed that he had no diplomatic immunity.
Officials from Aruba’s government denounced Maduro at the time for threatening Aruba with economic and military pressure if it declined to release Carvajal. The Dutch federal government released Carvajal four days later on July 28, stating him persona non grata and sending him back to Venezuela on a personal flight.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan author and files life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.