NEW YORK — Former Venezuelan general Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal arrived in New York on Wednesday, extradited from Spain, and will appear on Thursday for the first time before a judge in federal court to hear the charges against him, which could lead to to spend the rest of his days in a prison in the United States, judicial sources told EFE.
Carvajal, whose extradition was ordered Monday by the Spanish National Court to Interpol, faces charges of conspiring to introduce cocaine into the United States. He is also charged with two other crimes for the use and possession of firearms in connection with the two previous charges.
Any of the four charges could carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty.
According to the federal prosecutor’s office for the southern district in Manhattan, where the Venezuelan counterintelligence chief will be tried during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, a time has not yet been set for his hearing.
Specifically, the US Attorney’s Office claims to have evidence of Carvajal’s participation in sending a shipment of 5.6 tons of cocaine that was transported from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006.
In March 2020, the United States government charged Carvajal, along with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and the first vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, considered the number two of Chavismo, and other leaders. Venezuelans.
The US government accuses them of participating in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorist conspiracy in which the Los Soles Cartel and the Colombian guerrillas of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) allegedly participated.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Maduro helped and ultimately led said drug trafficking group through which he enriched himself and “flooded” the United States with drugs, “using cocaine as a weapon against the United States.”
Likewise, Carvajal and the rest of the defendants are accused of having acted as “leaders and administrators” of the Cartel de los Soles and of the narco-terrorist conspiracy with the FARC.
Hugo Armando Carvajal, who fled Venezuela with a false passport in 2019, had been in preventive detention in Spain for more than two years due to the patent risk of flight, since his whereabouts were unknown for almost two years, between 2019 and 2021.
His track was lost when the third criminal section of the National Court refused to hand him over to the United States. The full magistrates of the Criminal Chamber revoked that decision shortly after, although, by then, the court could no longer locate him until in September 2021 he was arrested in Madrid, in a different place from where his family is registered. couple and their five children.
Since he was arrested, Carvajal tried to prevent his surrender by all means, unsuccessfully requesting asylum in Spain and challenging all the decisions that the judges were handing down against him, until he finally lost that battle and was extradited to the United States.
2023-07-20 02:09:31
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