Police in Madrid on Thursday arrested a former Venezuelan spymaster wanted on U.S. narcoterrorism charges, capturing him in a hideout apartment nearly two years after he defied a Spanish extradition order and disappeared.
By AP News – Joshua Goodman and Aritz Parra
Sep 9, 2021
Gen. Hugo Carvajal, who for over a decade was late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez’s eyes and ears in the Venezuelan military, was arrested in the small apartment in which he had been holed up.
“He lived totally enclosed, never going outside or getting close to the window, always protected by people he trusted,” Spain’s police said in a statement on social media in which they posted a short video the moment heavily-armed officers put handcuffs on Carvajal.
Spain’s leftist government last year approved Carvajal’s extradition to the U.S., where he faces federal charges for allegedly working with guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to “flood” the U.S. with cocaine.
The extradition order followed a back-and-forth legal battle in which Spain’s National Court reversed an earlier ruling by a high court magistrate throwing out the U.S. warrant for being politically motivated. In the interim, Carvajal was released and never heard from again except when he said last year that he was going underground to protest what he viewed as political interference in his case.
He resurfaced on social media earlier this month, posting with little notice what could be a preview of his eventual defense: a statement accusing former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who was for years the U.S.? main caretaker in the war on drugs, of “fabricating” evidence against him and the Chávez government even as it was cooperating with U.S. prosecutors to arrest Colombian narcos hiding inside Venezuela
“It’s a lie that will eventually collapse,” Carvajal wrote. “I’ve always trusted that the truth will prevail.”
It’s not clear when Carvajal could be sent to the U.S. But his extradition may be slowed down by an asylum request he previously submitted to Spanish authorities.
“I’m prepared for either situation, the good or the bad,” Carvajal’s wife, Angélica Flores, told The Associated Press when contacted by phone with the news. “It’s up to him and others to give statements. This case will continue and we’ll see how it ends.”
Nicknamed “El Pollo” (“The Chicken”), Carvajal has bete noire of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for over a decade.
First indicted in 2011, he narrowly escaped extradition when he was arrested in Aruba in 2014 while serving as Venezuela’s consul general to the Dutch Caribbean island. President Nicolás Maduro’s government successfully applied pressure on Aruba, which sits just miles off Venezuela’s coast, to release Carvajal and when it did he received a hero’s welcome upon his return to Caracas.
But he was never a confidant of Maduro and in the complicated internal politics of Venezuela’s ruling socialist party was relegated to a minor role as a backbench parliamentarian.
In 2019, after opposition leader Juan Guaidó led a street uprising and quickly won the U.S.? recognition as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, Carvajal then openly rejected the government, urging members of the military to break with Maduro.
While on the run, both from the DEA and Maduro, Carvajal traveled to the Spanish capital from the Dominican Republic under a disguised identity. He was greeted at Madrid’s airport by two Spanish intelligence officials, the AP has previously reported.
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Read More: AP News – Spain arrests Venezuelan spymaster wanted on US drug charges
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