MADRID (AP) – Wigs, fake mustaches, plastic surgery and a new safe house every three months – these are some of the weapons of the Spanish elite who believe the former Venezuelan relied on them to avoid being deprived of US license for narcoterrorism.
Hugo Carvajal’s two-year hunt ended Thursday night police entered the house where the storm was raging in a peaceful area of Madrid where he found the fugitive in the back room carrying a sharp knife in the process of trying to make a final escape.
Named “El Pollo” (“The Chicken”), Carvajal has been a thorn in the side of the US Drug Enforing Administration since 2014, when he was detained in Aruba for a US release on the grounds that President Nicolás Maduro’s government demanded the release of a small Dutch Caribbean island. .
He returned to Caracas an anti-imperialist hero but quickly became obsessed with a small part in the ruling party. Then in 2019 he parted ways with Maduro in the midst of anti-government protests, and called on the military to replace the loyalist Juan Guaidó, the US opposition leader who had just identified him as the legitimate President of Venezuela.
A resurgence in Europe a few months later, he was received at the airport in Madrid by two Spanish intelligence officers on board with a fake passport, The Associated Press he has said before. From there, he hopes to continue making Maduro.
But he was forced to hide repeatedly after the Spanish Supreme Court in 2019 ruled he had to travel to New York to answer government charges he had worked with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, “flooding” the US with cocaine.
While on the run, he was reported to be in Portugal, then hiding in the Caribbean. Some Venezuelans – who always have a good plot – believe that they were already on U.S. soil by hiding the secrets of Venezuelan military crackdown on drug trafficking, or returning to Caracas to reconcile with the government they promised to seize. Some think they are being protected by the Spanish left-wing government, which has stopped following US laws seeking to exclude Maduro.
The truth was simple: the 61-year-old did not leave Madrid. His last refuge was only 2.5 miles (1.5 miles) from the National Police headquarters.
“If he can get her back this time, it will be an interesting way to show how justice benefits dialogue and intelligence,” said Dick Gregorie, who as a prosecutor in Miami also sued Carvajal on drug charges.
Gregorie compared Carvajal to a former athlete who researched them, a former Panama national, General Manuel Noriega. Both men, he said, were able to cut ties on both sides while disrupting justice.
“They could have sent him here several times but for various unknown reasons he was allowed to go,” said Gregorie, who is now retired. “It’s the worst thing that has happened to Venezuela for a decade.”
Carvajal’s arrest appears to have been made possible by intelligence provided by the DEA in June, according to a report published Friday by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. In a two-page confidential letter, Dustin Harmon, a DEA affiliated in Madrid, provided police with the name and contact numbers of a Venezuelan woman who allegedly lived and lived in a house where Carvajal hid.
Harmon’s letter also warned Spanish officials that Carvajal was known to use wigs and other hidden objects, as well as plastic surgery, to avoid detection. The DEA declined to comment.
Spanish police said the dog was a constant companion of Carvajal in a life of loneliness and deprivation.
“They change shelter every three months, using their living quarters, not going to the streets, for fear of being identified in public,” police said in a statement.
Filled with spyware, they often change their phones and rely on others to provide food. He breathed a sigh of relief, only to find that he had hidden himself in a field full of hidden seeds.
A video published by the National Police in Spain on Friday showed a special group entering the house, where the whereabouts of the fugitive were not recognized even by those living in the 12th floor.
The US paid $ 10 million for Carvajal’s arrest, and repeatedly announced the reward as bait in the hope that someone from Carvajal would betray him.
But it is not immediately clear if anyone has been abducted. His wife, Angélica Flores, who lives in Madrid with the family’s five children and some relatives, did not understand.
“I’m ready for anything, good or bad,” he told AP after being connected by phone with the story. “It is up to him and others to decide. The case will continue and we will see how it ends. ”
New York’s Carvajal lawsuit is based on a DC-9 flight from Caracas that arrived in southern Mexico in 2006 with 5.6 tons of cocaine packed in 128 suitcases. of at least 10 witnesses, among them former members of the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” who live with Venezuelan military personnel engaged in drug trafficking, according to a pledge to accompany the opposition.
The New York protest also repeats a lawsuit filed by Carvajal for providing Colombian terrorists with automatic weapons and security in Venezuela.
“Carvajal is the most important link between Colombian terrorists, Mexican drug cartels and other terrorist organizations in the US and Europe,” said Martin Rodil, a Washington-based US security adviser who has worked in Venezuela for several years. research. “He was a great tool among all these teams.”
The old man scoffed at this. He further added that his alliance with the FARC – which was designated a terrorist organization by the US – was sanctioned by Chávez and was only to prevent the release of a detained Venezuelan businessman who has been arrested and to establish peace talks with the Colombian government. He also said that legal cases in Venezuela and Mexico were not related to a cocaine-laden plane and that the airline’s owner was assisting him.
The order for Carvajal’s reinstatement followed an altercation in which the Spanish Supreme Court reversed the original decision of the chief justice of the court to revoke U.S. political affiliation. In the meantime, Carvajal has been released and is being held on bail. He never heard of him again except for when he said last year that he was secretly going against what he saw as political interference.
He re-emerged on television earlier this month, writing what could be a reflection of what he would do to protect himself: remarks against former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, a former US diplomat in the war on drugs, “false” evidence against him and the government of Chávez despite their cooperation with US lawyers to arrest Colombian narcos hiding inside Venezuela.
“It’s a lie that will eventually fall,” Carvajal wrote. “I have always believed that the truth would spread.”
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Goodman says from Miami.