Venezuelan ex-spy chief disappears as Spain seeks to extradite him to US

November 13, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis

The former director of Venezuela’s military spy agency, who is wanted in the United States for drug trafficking, reportedly disappeared in Spain as authorities there were attempting to extradite him to Washington. Hugo Carvajal is a retired general and former diplomat, who was a member of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s inner circle. From 2004 to 2011, under Chávez’s tutelage, Carvajal headed the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM).

In 2008 the US named Carvajal as a major facilitator of international drugs trafficking and imposed financial sanctions on his assets around the world. Washington accused Carvajal of assisting the paramilitary group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) transport drugs from Latin America to Mexico and from there to the US.

Things took an interesting turn, however, when in February of this year Carvajal posted a video on social media in which he denounced Chávez’s successor, President Nicolás Maduro, and sided with his arch-nemesis, Juan Guaido, the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela. In his video, Carvajal urged the Venezuelan armed forces to stop siding with Maduro and support Guaido as Venezuela’s acting president. Guaido is openly supported by the United States and dozens of other Western countries.

Soon after making his announcement, Carvajal fled to Spain, where he was arrested in April, after the US Department of Justice filed a formal request for the former spy chief’s extradition to America. But in September, Spain’s top criminal court ruled that Carvajal would not be extradited to the US. The former spy chief was released minutes after the court made its decision known.

Last Friday, however, the same court accepted an appeal by the Office of the Public Prosecutor and overturned its earlier decision. Shortly after the court’s decision, Spanish media reported that Carvajal had already been arrested and was due to be transported to the US in a matter of days. But three days later, the former spy chief posted a message on his personal Twitter account saying that neither he nor his lawyers had been approached by Spanish police. It appeared, then, that Carvajal had not been detained.

Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Tuesday that Carvajal was nowhere to be found when Spanish police officers went to his residence in Madrid to arrest him. His whereabouts are currently unknown, said the paper. The US Department of Justice has not commented on the case.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 November 2019 | Permalink