Spanish justice asks the US for guarantees in extradition of Venezuelan Hugo Carvajal

The Spanish National Court today agreed to ask the United States for guarantees in the extradition of former Venezuelan general Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as Pollo Carvajal, with regard to human rights treatment and the possibility of recourse.

The United States claims the former Venezuelan general, former head of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate of Venezuela, for alleged drug trafficking crimes, after being arrested in Spain last September.

What the National Court decided today is to notify the order in which it agreed at the time to request these guarantees, and now the United States has a period of 45 days to respond, according to sources from this Spanish body.

According to these same sources, the order was already done but there was no evidence that it was notified and due to this procedural error, Carvajal’s defense requested and managed to stop the extradition of the former general last week.

Shortly before the extradition materialized, the magistrates realized, after Carvajal’s defense warned him, that the plenary session did not complete the order requesting the guarantees from the United States as announced when rejecting an incident of nullity against the decision to hand him over.

As Carvajal’s lawyer, María Dolores Argüelles, told Efe, the intention was to ask the United States for guarantees that he will not be sentenced to life imprisonment.

This would be the last obstacle that had to be overcome to be able to materialize the delivery, although Carvajal’s defense maintains that until the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court does not resolve the appeal that he presented against the denial of asylum that the ex-general, he cannot be extradited.

Since he was arrested and entered prison last September, after almost two years in the unknown, Carvajal has tried to stop his surrender by all means: from requesting asylum to reaching the Spanish Supreme Court, which this week also rejected his appeal against the Government’s agreement to extradite him.

Another trick was to lend himself to testify before a Spanish judge about alleged corruption schemes of the Chavista regime with former Spanish political leaders of the left-wing party Podemos for the alleged financing of this political formation.

The Spanish National Court already gave the green light to the delivery of Carvajal in 2019, but it could not be enforced due to his disappearance, and now it is reactivated, after his arrest in Madrid last September. (I)