Thursday October 21, 2021
Does the USA want its secret knowledge?
Spain is extraditing former Chavez consultants
During the presidency of Hugo Chávez, Hugo Carvajal serves as chief intelligence officer in Venezuela. The 61-year-old is now in prison in Spain and is awaiting extradition to the United States. Washington accuses him of drug trafficking. But there is probably more to it than that.
The Spanish judiciary has ordered the extradition of the former head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, to the United States. The National Court of Justice said that the various competent authorities in Spain have already been informed of this decision. The 61-year-old Carvajal is accused by the US authorities, among other things, of drug trafficking and cooperation with the former Colombian terrorist organization FARC. A date for the delivery has not been announced for the time being.
Carvajal has been behind bars in Estremera prison around 75 kilometers southeast of Madrid for a good month. He was tracked down by the Spanish police on September 9th in a joint operation with the US drug agency DEA in an apartment in Madrid. He then applied for asylum in Spain, which was rejected by the Interior Ministry. Carvajal can still appeal against this. Experts give this legal remedy little chance of success.
It was Carvajal’s second arrest in Spain. After entering the country with false papers, the former military and politician was arrested for the first time in Madrid in April 2019. At that time, a court initially refused extradition to the USA. The Venezuelan was then released. When the next higher court decision shortly afterwards that he should be extradited, Carvajal went into hiding.
At the beginning of 2019, the longtime advisor to the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, caused a stir around the world when he surprisingly changed fronts in the Venezuelan power struggle and in videos on Twitter promised his support for the self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó. He accused the left-wing nationalist President Nicolás Maduro of being responsible for the serious crisis in the South American country. Spanish media suspect that the USA also wants to interrogate Carvajal because he knows more than anyone else about “the most important secrets” of the Chavez period.