New York (EFE).- Former Venezuelan general Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal appeared for the first time before a New York judge after his extradition on Wednesday from Spain on drug trafficking charges, among others, and pleaded not guilty, witnesses in the courtroom told EFE.
Judge Stewart Aaron, of the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, who limited himself to reading the charges, set a new date for July 25, the day he will appear before the judge who will take his case, Alvin Hellerstein.
The hearing lasted barely 20 minutes, and Carvajal appeared dressed in khaki pants and a white T-shirt, with a calm face.
For his part, lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohmuna asked for a medical analysis, which was granted by the judge.
Upon leaving the court, Margulis-Ohmuna reiterated Carvajal’s innocence – “He is categorically innocent” – and added that the Prosecutor’s Office has no evidence against him such as text messages, emails or recorded conversations, videos or any other physical evidence.
The lawyer also added that, unlike other cases of notorious drug trafficking cases, such as the case of the Mexican Genaro García Luna (former Secretary of Security of Mexico, pending conviction), in Carvajal’s there is no “evidence of inexplicable wealth (of origin), “in a text that he prepared and delivered to informants.
“General Carvajal always lived modestly with his family (…) and in his professional career he acted in the interest of Venezuelan democracy and at the service of the legitimate and democratically elected government of Venezuela at that time,” during the presidency of Hugo Chávez.
Likewise, he stressed that Carvajal became a deputy in his country but then broke with Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro.
The US Attorney’s Office claims to have evidence of Carvajal’s participation in sending a shipment of 5.6 tons of cocaine that was transported from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006.
In March 2020, the United States government indicted Carvajal, along with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and the first vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, considered the number two of Chavismo, and other Venezuelan leaders.
The US government accuses them of participating in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorist conspiracy in which the Los Soles Cartel and the Colombian FARC guerrilla group allegedly participated.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Maduro helped and ultimately led said drug trafficking group through which he enriched himself and “flooded” the United States with drugs, “using cocaine as a weapon against the United States.”
Likewise, Carvajal and the rest of the defendants are accused of having acted as “leaders and administrators” of the Cartel de los Soles and of a “narco-terrorist conspiracy” with the FARC.
Hugo Armando Carvajal, who fled Venezuela with a false passport in 2019, had been in preventive detention in Spain for more than two years due to the patent risk of flight, since his whereabouts were unknown for almost two years, between 2019 and 2021.