When everything was ready for the delivery of former Venezuelan general Hugo Armando Carvajal to the United States, the National Court stopped it at the last moment due to the lack of a procedure. Three months later and, despite having solved it, Pollo Carvajal is still in Spain, now pending a second asylum request.
Since he was arrested on September 9 after almost two years in hiding, the former head of Military Counterintelligence in the governments of Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro has not relented in his efforts to prevent his surrender to the US Justice, which accuses him of being part of an organization dedicated to drug trafficking and related to the FARC.
In addition to the battery of resources filed before the Justice, its offensive also goes through the Ministry of Interior, to whom he has already requested asylum on two occasions. The first was denied -and is currently being appealed- and it is the second, which is being processed, which is currently stopping its delivery.
dates back to 2019
The National Court gave the green light to his extradition in November 2019, after revoking an initial decision of the third section of the Criminal Court not to hand him over. But, by then, Carvajal was already in unknown location.
It was actually in Madridwhere he was arrested almost two years later, after having undergone several aesthetic operations and having changed his address every three months to mislead the Police.
Only four days after entering prison, where he continues despite attempts by his defense to make him releasethe High Court suspended his extradition for the first time, pending an appeal against the refusal of the department of Fernando Grande-Marlaska to grant him asylum.
A month of judicial offensive
During the little more than a month that passed until Interior resolved that resource, Carvajal deployed a new offensive. He offered to testify before the judge of the National High Court Manuel Garcia Castelloninitially on terrorism issues, but finally ended up pointing to alleged payments to former leaders of Podemos through the state oil company (PDVSA), and among them he cited Juan Carlos Monedero.
After delivering documentation with which he intended to endorse his theory, the judge summoned him again and reopened a case on the financing of Podemos that was archived in 2016 and it is currently still open.
But in the midst of all that and before he went to testify again, Interior finally resolved and denied his first request for asylum. The National Court was given the go-ahead to hand it over and, despite the fact that the judge asked him to delay the handover a bit, the court saw in Carvajal’s sudden collaboration a “delay strategy” and made his extradition effective on October 20.
‘Almost’ extradition
The judicial journey seemed finished and, in fact, the delivery was expected to be on October 23 but, a day before and in a new script twist, the Court suspended it again: it was missing that U.S give guarantees about the life sentence that could be imposed there.
He did so a month later and the National High Court declared his response sufficient on two occasions, the last in December, after rejecting one of Carvajal’s multiple appeals, who, despite that decision, has managed to continue delaying its delivery.
This time, as specified in an order at the end of the year, the court will wait for the Interior to resolve its second asylum request, formulated around the political persecution of the United States that the former general alleges, and that is currently in process.
According to legal sources consulted by Efe, the court will not pronounce until that request is firm, that is to say, after the resources that Carvajal will surely file are resolved, who, in addition, can present more requests for international protection as long as the reasons are not the same, indicate sources from the Interior.