
Image source, Reuters
The United States Department of Justice reported that the former director of Military Intelligence of Venezuela, Hugo Carvajal, known as “El Chicken”, declared himself guilty of crimes of narcorephic and narcoterrorism in a federal court.
Carvajal faces conspiracy charges to import cocaine to the United States, conspiracy for drug trafficking and two others related to possession of weapons. The maximum penalty that could face is life imprisonment.
Your sentence will be known on October 29.
The prosecutors of the case argued that Carvajal, together with other high -ranking officials and Venezuelan military, led the Los Soles cartel, which facilitated the sending of tons of cocaine to US territory and collaborated with the former Colombian guerrillas of the FARC.
“The deeply worrying reality is that there are powerful officials of foreign governments that conspire to flood the United States with drugs,” said federal prosecutor Jay Clayton.
Robert Murphy, a special agent of the DEA, said that Carvajal used his position as head of Venezuelan intelligence to “cause damage to the United States.”
Image source, Reuters
Who is “The Chicken” Carvajal
Carvajal was the head of the Military Intelligence (DIM) Directorate of Venezuela between 2004 and 2011, under the government of Hugo Chávez, and between 2013 and 2014, under the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Since 2008 it had been included in the Clinton list, which includes a series of people, officials and companies that Washington considers suspected of actively collaborating with drug trafficking and its allies, in this case the FARC.
In 2014, he was arrested for a few days in Aruba, at the request of the US, but managed to be free before facing US authorities because by then he was a diplomatic representative of Venezuela.
In 2017, Carvajal broke relations with Maduro. He accused him of murdering hundreds of young people “for claiming the rights that you stole” and responsible for the shortage of food and medicines in Venezuela.
Two years later, he published a video on social networks recognizing the opponent Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela.
In 2019, he was arrested in Spain, again for an extradition request from the US, but he escaped and was two years fugitive from justice.
In September 2021 he was recaptured and in July 2023 he was finally extradited.
According to the statement that the Department of Justice announced after it declared itself guilty this Wednesday, “El Chicken” Carvajal and other members of the so -called poster of the Suns “abused the Venezuelan people and corrupted the legitimate institutions of Venezuela, including parts of the army, intelligence services, legislative power and the judiciary, in order to facilitate the importation of tons of tons of cocaine to the United States.”
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