The Strasbourg Court today gave the green light to Spain to extradite to the United States, which wants to try him for drug trafficking,he former head of Venezuelan counterintelligence during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as the “Carvajal Chicken”.
(Read also: Venezuela: The original opposition debate to design a strategy against Maduro?)
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 risks being sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of ever getting a parole.
However, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) “is convinced” that he will be tried in “a judicial system that respects the preeminence of law and of the principles of an equitable process in which you will have full possibility to organize your 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.
The Strasbourg Court gives Spain the green light to extradite to the US the former head of Venezuelan counterintelligence during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as El Pollo Carvajal, to be tried for drug trafficking.… pic.twitter.com/pJXOffCOaF
– EFE News (@EFEnoticias) July 13, 2023
If you are found guilty, extenuating circumstances may be considered and, eventually, you may resort to a first judicial decision. The ECHR notes that maximum penalties “are very common” in federal proceedings in the United States.
He also recalls that, to clarify things, the United States embassy in Spain had published a verbal note in November 2021 in which it explained that in the event that he was sentenced to incompressible perpetuity, he would not only 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.
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 was exposed to a violation of the article of the European Convention on Human Rights that prohibits the violation of inhuman and degrading treatment.
Hugo el ‘Pollo’ Carvajal was arrested by the Spanish Police and the DEA.
police of spain
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 Venezuelan Army and accused of treason for having recognized Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader to the regime of President Nicolás Maduro, as president.
EFE
More news in EL TIEMPO
The scuffle between Maduro and Capriles on Twitter, what is Chavismo playing at?
Venezuela: filed an appeal for the Court of Justice to suspend the primaries
