"Pollo Carvajal" arrested for drug trafficking in Madrid 0:53
(CNN Spanish) -
The National Court of Spain suspended in a precautionary and indefinite way the extradition of Hugo "Pollo" Carvajal, former director general of Military Counterintelligence of Venezuela, to the United States, where he is claimed for alleged drug trafficking crimes, among others.
The court reported in a statement that this extradition will not be effective until an asylum process that Carvajal, according to his lawyer, María Dolores de Argüelles, has been open in Spain since the second quarter of 2019 is resolved.
Argüelles had told CNN the week before that the agreement of the Council of Ministers of Spain of March 3, 2020, where the approval of the delivery of his client to the United States, already detailed that the extradition could not take place until the asylum request was resolved.
Carvajal was arrested Thursday night in Madrid by agents of the National Police after a joint operation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
This was the operation to arrest Hugo Carvajal in Spain
The arrest responded to a request from the National Court in November 2019, which then agreed to the extradition to the United States of the retired major general of the Venezuelan Army.
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The capture of Carvajal was a challenge for the National Police after his escape after the decision of the National Court, as detailed by the security body in a press release.
How did Hugo 'Pollo' Carvajal hide in Spain?
According to the authorities, Carvajal concealed his identity by undergoing "several cosmetic surgery operations to modify his appearance" and would have used "all kinds of disguise elements to facilitate his concealment, among which mustaches, beards and false wigs were detected. ".
To these obstacles, the National Police adds the lack of property or material goods in Carvajal's name that would help locate him, as well as that it used "several of the consorts as interposed figures of their entire confidence, with the sole purpose of trying to pass unnoticed by the security forces and bodies and not leaving any trace that allows identifying their presence in national territory. "
According to the National Police in the same press release, several agents of the Spanish security force were able to enter the house where Carvajal was hiding after obtaining the corresponding entry and registration authorization from the guard court.
The entrance was not easy, as they detailed, since they had to tear down an armored door in the surroundings of a fortified floor.
It was in one of the last rooms of the house that they found Carvajal locked up, in an alleged "desperate attempt to avoid police arrest."
The agents of the Police Intervention Unit who carried out the operation had to neutralize and shackle him after removing a sharp knife that he carried with him, according to the account detailed in a press release by the National Police.
After Carvajal's arrest, the police force said that he acknowledged having remained in Spain at all times and that, every three months, "he changed his hiding place using different addresses where he lived completely cloistered, without going out into the street at any time, frightened by the public diffusion of his image ".
His arrest came as a surprise, Argüelles told CNN. The lawyer said that her client pleads not guilty to the charges for which the United States claims him, and for that reason they presented the following day, Friday, extremely precautionary measures before the Supreme Court to prevent the extradition from being effective.