The Criminal Chamber of the National Court has given a coup of authority this Thursday and has refused to stop again the extradition of Hugo Armando Carvajal, alias The chicken Carvajal, the former head of the Venezuelan counterintelligence who is imprisoned in Spain and who is claimed by the United States for drug trafficking, money laundering and collaboration with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The judges of the Third Section, who this Wednesday ordered to make the delivery to the American power effective, have refused to postpone this measure after the investigating magistrate Manuel García-Castellón informed them that he had summoned the military to testify on the 27th of October in a case about Podemos. The court accuses Carvajal of deploying a “delaying strategy.”
Through a three-page resolution, the Chamber concludes that “there is no place to suspend or postpone the materialization of the surrender” of the soldier. And it emphasizes that the García-Castellón court cannot “participate” in anything related to “the execution phase” of the extradition: “That it is exclusive to this Section as the only competent judicial authority”, underline the magistrates Alfonso Guevara, Carolina Rius and Carlos Fraile. Moreover, the court has ordered that its ruling be sent to the Subdirectorate for International Legal Cooperation of the Ministry of Justice, as well as to the chief commissioner of the Office for International Police Cooperation, to let the latter know that “it will only and exclusively attend to the orders to be referred by this Third Section of the Criminal Chamber, the only competent authority to decide on the present extraditional case ”.
The latest resolutions issued by the Chamber inflict a severe blow to the military, who has been trying for weeks to stop in extremis delivery. In 2019, the National Court already approved it, but Carvajal fled shortly before it materialized and has been on the run from Spanish justice for almost two years. Until his arrest on September 9 in Madrid. Since then, the former head of counterintelligence has opened three legal fronts to try to prevent his surrender: at the Interior Ministry, with a request for asylum; at the National Court, where he requested that he be considered a protected witness to collaborate in a case on international terrorism led by García-Castellón; and in the Supreme Court, where he has appealed the agreement of the Council of Ministers that, on March 3, 2020, approved his extradition to be tried in the southern district of New York.
“[La] Carvajal’s will to try to collaborate with the Spanish justice would be a delaying maneuver of the extraditional process, which he already managed to delay by not appearing voluntarily before this Section once the arrest warrant was issued on November 8, 2019, and searching and arresting ”, he emphasizes the shortlist of magistrates, who emphasize: “[Entonces] his police arrest was necessary on September 9 of this year ”. In this sense, the judges insist that El Pollo never asked to testify on the case of Podemos until his arrest in 2021 and that, although the delivery was executed, the Venezuelan can testify by videoconference thanks to “the legal cooperation mechanisms in criminal matters signed by Spain and the United States ”.
The delivery process has sped up in recent days. Interior reported earlier in the week that it declared firm the refusal to grant asylum to the Venezuelan, who could still take that decision of the Government to the courts through contentious-administrative means. Then, the Third Criminal Section ordered this Wednesday to make the extradition effective. But, a day before, García-Castellón had reopened an old case about the alleged irregular financing of Podemos, which had been shelved for five years, after having previously taken a statement from Carvajal in the case on international terrorism. In that interrogation, held on September 20, El Pollo accused Podemos of receiving money from the Chavista governments and, later, provided several documents to the magistrate who, according to the military man, support his words.