Hugo Armando Carvajal, alias 'El Pollo', during a hearing at the National Court, in a file image.EFE
Hugo Armando Carvajal,
El Pollo Carvajal
, will continue to be locked up in the Estremera prison (Madrid).
The head of Venezuelan counterintelligence until 2014, captured in 2021 after spending two years on the run from Spanish justice, has once again failed in his attempt to be free.
The National Court has rejected this Thursday the last request of the soldier, who asked last week to be released pending the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to resolve the pending appeal on his extradition to the United States.
"The risk of flight not only persists, but has increased", the magistrates have concluded by denying their claim.
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The National Court cuts the wings of Pollo Carvajal
The judges do not trust El Pollo, who has put into practice all kinds of maneuvers to try to prevent his delivery to the US, which claims him for narco-terrorism.
Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro trusted person until his departure from Venezuela after breaking with the regime, his history betrays him as an elusive man.
He landed in Spain in 2019 with a false passport in the name of Adolfo José Mouriño.
A few weeks later, the Police arrested him, thus activating the extradition process, to which the National High Court gave the green light that same year.
But it wasn't going to be that easy.
Then, taking advantage of the fact that he was free while the matter was being resolved, the soldier fled.
Carvajal remained two years in the shadow.
From 2019 to 2021, he frequently moved from one apartment to another and barely went out, according to police sources when he was recaptured in September of last year.
Since then, he has been imprisoned and the magistrates have rejected all his requests to be released.
In addition, at that time, the National High Court has definitively approved his extradition to the United States, after resolving a whole battery of allegations and maneuvers, which has included appeals before the Supreme Court and asylum requests.
The court has even accused him of launching a "delaying" strategy, which has allowed him to stop his extradition until today.
In fact, this is suspended, waiting exclusively for the ECHR to resolve its last resort.
Theoretically, this is the last bullet left for him to avoid his shipment to the United States. “The delivery decision is final, both in jurisdictional and governmental channels, having also rejected the requests for asylum and international protection concerned, being only waiting of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights”, the magistrates of the National Court recalled this Thursday.
This situation generates, in the opinion of the judges, that the latent flight risk is greater than before.
For this reason, preventive detention is not only "necessary", but "essential", highlights the court.