The National Court of Spain has decided to keep former Venezuelan general Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as El Pollo Carvajal, in preventive detention due to the “more than obvious risk of escape”, given that he has already been searched for and captured for almost two years and because the decision to hand him over to the United States is “final”, even if it is on hold.
In an order issued this Thursday, the court rejected the request made this week by the person who was head of military counterintelligence in the governments of Venezuelan presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, who requested his release after a year in provisional prison pending formalization of his extradition to the United States for alleged drug trafficking crimes.
A delivery that was agreed by the National High Court three years ago, in 2019, and that now remains on hold after Carvajal appealed it before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
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The magistrates remind the former general that he has been in preventive detention for less than a year, after almost two in search and capture, so that the deadlines established in the law have not been passed.
All of this in the face of “the more than evident risk of flight that would prevent the materialization of the delivery, which at no time has been left without effect,” says the court, which specifies that it is only suspended until the ECHR resolves.
In addition, he stresses, the risk of flight not only persists, but has increased, because the decision delivery is “definitive”, as the requests for asylum and international protection have been rejected, and only the decision of the ECHR remains.
For all these reasons, the Court sees “not only necessary, but essential” that Pollo Carvajal continue in prison prov
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Its delivery was agreed in 2019, but when the Court went to execute it, The defendant was no longer located until in September 2021 he was discovered, with the help of the US DEA, in an apartment in Madrid.
When the arrest occurred and his admission to provisional prison was ordered, the magistrates agreed to paralyze the delivery because a first request for asylum had not been resolved, which was finally denied.
His lawyer, who seeks to stop the extradition with all kinds of resources, made a second request for asylum, that despite having been rejected again by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, it will continue its journey through the resources.
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Carvajal is claimed by the United States for alleged crimes that in Spain are equivalent to belonging to a criminal organization or belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization and drug trafficking in its aggravated form.