The Spanish national court, charged with extradition matters, made a decision that may have a broad impact in the Latin American geopolitical landscape.
By ordering on Tuesday Interpol to ‘immediately deliver’ Hugo Carvajal to US authorities, Spanish judges may have lit the fuse than can set leftist regimes on fire throughout Latin America.
‘El Pollo’ (the chicken} Carvajal was stripped of his General rank in Venezuelan Counter-Intelligence by Maduro’s administration after he made the failed political bet of coming out in support of the US-supported opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s acting president, in February 2019.
Carvajal was finally arrested in Madrid in September 2021, on a drug trafficking Interpol search warrant.
Reuters reported:
“The former head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, who is wanted by the United States on drug trafficking charges, has left Spain under a High Court extradition order, his lawyer and a court source told Reuters on Wednesday.
Carvajal is expected to arrive in the United States later in the day and could make an initial court appearance on Thursday morning, his lawyer, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, said.”
The Spanish court ordered Carvajal’s immediate extradition after the European Court of Human Rights rejected his last attempt to avoid being sent to the US.
Carvajal was Chavez’s eyes and ears within Venezuela’s military for more than a decade, and he knows many secrets about the continental socialist movement in Latin America.
“The United States in 2020 accused Carvajal of drug trafficking, along with more than a dozen other high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including President Nicolas Maduro. Carvajal has denied supporting cocaine trafficking to the United States.”
The European court of human rights ended up rejecting his appeal against extradition to the US, arguing it was not proven he faces a ‘real risk’ of ‘being sentenced to life imprisonment without chance of parole’.
The Guardian reported:
“Gen Hugo Armando Carvajal, who served as intelligence chief under the former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, has long been sought by US Treasury officials who suspect him of providing support to drug trafficking by the now disarmed Farc guerrilla group in Colombia.
Prosecutors in New York allege he used his high office to coordinate the smuggling of approximately 5,600kg (12,345lb) of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006 that was destined for the US.
Known by the nickname “El Pollo” – the Chicken – the 63-year-old is also suspected of potentially having incriminating evidence against the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, Chavez’s successor and a major adversary of the US.”
But ‘El Pollo’ holds secret over more than just Venezuela’s strong man. A whole network of people in power indebted to the Bolivarian socialists exists in the region.
Tupi Report on Telegraph:
“[T]he European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ‘is convinced’ that he will be tried in ‘a judicial system that respects the pre-eminence of the law and the principles of a fair trial in which he will have full opportunity to organize his defense with a lawyer’.”
The veteran spy hopes to reduce eventual prison sentences by sharing his many secrets over this scheme. Than can cause a conflagration in some of the most revered socialist Latin leaders.
“The former head of Venezuela’s Secret Service, General Hugo Armando Carvajal […] sent a seven-page letter to Spanish judge Manuel García-Castellón in which he recounts details of a scheme to finance left-wing parties in Latin America and Europe by the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.
[…] Carvajal cites as “concrete” examples of beneficiaries of the financing scheme: [Brazilian] President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Néstor Kirchner in Argentina; Evo Morales in Bolivia; Fernando Lugo in Paraguay; Ollanta Humala in Peru; Zelaya in Honduras; Gustavo Petro in Colombia; the Five Star Movement in Italy; and the Podemos party in Spain.”
And it’s not just well-informed ‘hearsay’: he claims to have proof of the existence of this scheme to finance left-wing parties by the Venezuelan government.
“I have informants who have witnessed different stages of this network. I asked my lawyers to contact them while I was in prison to ask if they would be willing to attest to my testimony, and some said yes about agreeing to testify before a judge.”
