2023-07-13 11:37:03
Hugo Carvajal, who was head of the military counterintelligence services with former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and also with Nicolás Maduro, during the hearing held this Thursday at the National Court. EFE/Emilio Naranjo
The Strasbourg Court today gave Spain the green light to extradite to the United States, which wants to prosecute him for drug trafficking, the former head of Venezuelan counterintelligence during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as El Pollo Carvajal.
The European judges, who had asked Spain not to carry out this extradition while they were examining Carvajal’s claim, dismissed the arguments that the former Venezuelan general had provided in his complaint, in which he stressed that in the United States he runs the risk of being impose a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of someday obtaining a conditional release.
However, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) “is convinced” that he will be tried in “a judicial system that respects the pre-eminence of law and the principles of a fair trial in which he will have full opportunity to organize his case.” defense with a lawyer.
On the question of the risk of an effective life sentence, without the possibility of being released from prison for the rest of his life, he insists that nothing is written because, depending on various circumstances, Pollo Carvajal does not have to end up with such a sentence.
If found guilty, extenuating circumstances could be considered and, eventually, a first judicial decision could be appealed. The ECHR notes that the maximum sentences “are very unusual” in federal proceedings in the United States.
He also recalls that, to clarify things, the United States embassy in Spain had sent a verbal note in November 2021 in which it explained that in the event that he was sentenced to incompressible life, not only would he have the option of a appeal, but also the possibility of requesting a pardon or that the sentence be commuted to a less harsh one.
El “Pollo” Carvajal with the dictator Nicolás Maduro, before defecting from the Chavista regime. (Archyde.com)
The former head of Venezuelan counterintelligence had denounced Spain in Strasbourg after his appeal for amparo before the Constitutional Court failed in October 2021, alleging that if he was sent to the United States, he would be exposed to a violation of the article of the European Convention on Human Rights. Human Rights that prohibits the violation of inhuman and degrading treatment.
The jurisprudence of the ECtHR on this article has established the principle that in the case of life imprisonment and in order not to violate this right, the country that applies it has to contemplate the possibility of a reduction of the effective sentence taking into account significant changes in life of the prisoner, such as progress in his rehabilitation that makes his maintenance behind bars illegitimate.
Carvajal, who is being held in the Estremera prison (Madrid province), arrived in Spain in March 2019 with a false identity and was arrested under an Interpol search warrant, since the United States had been demanding him for years. as responsible for acts of narcoterrorism and the introduction of cocaine into its territory.
Before that, he had already been arrested in July 2014 in Aruba, a territory of the Netherlands in the Caribbean where he was consul for Venezuela, for the same US arrest warrant. He then he was able to avoid extradition of him by his diplomatic status, but he was expelled from him.
In 2019, when he was a member of the Venezuelan National Assembly, he was expelled from the Army of his country and accused of treason for having recognized Juan Guaidó as president, an opposition leader to the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro.
(With information from EFE)
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