Former Venezuela spymaster pleads guilty to narcoterrorism charge ahead of trial
Miami – A former Venezuelan spymator who was close to the deceased president of the country, Hugo Chávez, pleaded guilty Wednesday for accusations of drug trafficking a week before his trial begins before a Federal Tribunal in Manhattan.
The retired major-general Hugo Carvajal was extradited from Spain in 2023 after more than a decade of flight from the American security forces, in particular a botched arrest in Aruba while he was a diplomat representing the current Venezuelan government Nicolás Maduro.
Carvajal pleaded guilty in the court of the four criminal accusations, notably narco-terrorism, in an accusation act of accusing him of leading a cartel composed of superior venezuelan military officers who tried to “flood” the United States with cocaine in Cahoot with leftist guerrillas from neighboring Colombia.
In a letter this week to the defense lawyer, the prosecutors said they thought that federal directives on determining the determination of determination in Carvajal to serve a compulsory minimum of 50 years in prison to a maximum of life.
Nicknamed “El Pollo”, Spanish for “The Chicken”, Carvajal advised Chávez for more than a decade. Later, he broke up with Marudo, Chávez’s successor, and launched his support for the political opposition supported by the United States – dramaticly.
In a recording made from a non -disclosed place, Carvajal called on his former military cohorts to rebel against a month in mass demonstrations seeking to replace Maduro by the legislator Juan Guaidó, which the first Trump administration recognized as the legitimate chief of Venezuela as chief of the elected National Democratic Assembly.
The revolt of the hoped -for barracks has never materialized and Carvajal fled to Spain. In 2021, he was captured hiding in an apartment in Madrid after having challenged a Spanish and disappeared extradition order.
The guilty plea of Carvajal, without any promise of Clémence, could be part of a bet to win the credit for having cooperated with the American efforts against a high -level foreign opponent which is at the top of the largest oil reserves in the world.
Although Carvajal has been out of power for years, his donors say that he can provide potentially precious information on the internal functioning of the Venezuelan gang Tren of Aragua in the United States and the spy activities of the Allied governments of Maduro de Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
It can also fall on Trump’s attention with information on the SmartMatic voting technology company. One of Carvajal’s deputies was a major player in Venezuela electoral authority when the company took off.
Smartmatic, based in Florida, said that its global activities have been decimated when Fox News has disseminated false allegations by Trump’s allies that she helped fake the 2020 US elections. One of the company’s Venezuelan founders was then charged in the United States in a case of corruption involving her work in the Philippines.
Gary Bernssen, a former CIA officer in Latin America who supervised commandos that hunted Al-Qaida, sent a public letter this week to Trump urging the Ministry of Justice to delay the start of the Carvajal trial so that the officials can debari.
“He’s not an angel, he’s a very bad man,” said Bernssen in an interview. “But we must defend democracy.”
Carvajal’s lawyer Robert FEITEL said the prosecutors announced this month to the court that they had never extended an advocacy offer to his client or sought to meet him.
“I think it was a huge mistake,” FEITEL told the Associated Press while refusing other comments. “He has extraordinarily important information for our national security and the police.”
In 2011, the prosecutors alleged that Carvajal had used his office to coordinate the smuggling of approximately 5,600 kilograms (12,300 pounds) of cocaine aboard a Jet of Venezuela in Mexico in 2006. In exchange, millions of dollars of drug traffickers, prosecutors said.
He would have organized the sending as one of the leaders of the so -called Cartel of the Suns – a nod to the solar insignia affixed to the uniforms of Venezuelan military officers. Cocaine was coming from the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization and which, for years, took refuge in Venezuela as it sought to overthrow the government of Colombia.
Carvajal “operated his post as director of military intelligence in Venezuela and abandoned his responsibility to the people of Venezuela in order to intentionally affect in the United States,” said the acting administrator of the DEA, Robert Murphy. “After years trying to escape the police, (he) will probably spend the rest of his life in federal prison.”
___
The writer Associated Press Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.
