Photo: Spanish National Police / Courtesy
By: The opinion Posted Jul 25, 2023, 1:49 pm EDT
After Hugo Carvajalformer head of Venezuela’s military intelligence pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges against him in the United States, Judge Alvin Hallerstein, of the Southern District Court of New York, announced that the trial was postponed until November 1.
Carvajal, 63 years old, He was extradited in recent days after being detained in Spain. The US authorities accuse him of conspiring to introduce more than five tons of cocaine into the country in 2006, in alliance with Rodrigo Londoño, aka “Timochenko”leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
With this postponement, Judge Hallerstein agreed to the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, which had requested three months to be able to present all the probative material in its possession, while the defendant’s defense agreed with this new date, according to EFE.
The former Venezuelan general Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as El Pollo Carvajal, has already been extradited to the United States, a country that claims him for drug trafficking crimes, after a long judicial journey that has ended in the European Court of Human Rights. pic.twitter.com/079oGAn5vF
– EFE News (@EFEnoticias) July 19, 2023
“El Pollo” appeared in court dressed in dark blue pants and a shirt, and listened with a calm attitude to the development of the session -of just over ten minutes- with headphones where the interventions of each other were translated.
According to the United States Department of Justice, Carvajal, who remains in custody at the Brooklyn Correctional Center, could face a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison.
The federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, affirmed that the defendant added a ten-year career in the criminal world. According to Williams, the crimes committed by Carvajal sought to “flood” the United States with tons of drugs potentially deadly.
For her part, DEA administrator Anne Milgran pointed out that officials like Carvajal “use their position to accept bribes and promote drug trafficking activities.”
For more than a decade, Carvajal advised the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, but left Venezuela after breaking relations with Nicolás Maduro and supporting the opposition against his government.
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