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- Retired Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal of Venezuela, an in depth confidant of the nation’s late socialist president, Hugo Chávez, pleaded not responsible to drug trafficking expenses in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday.
- Carvajal, 63, is accused of getting smuggled 12,300 kilos (6.15 tons) of cocaine into Mexico aboard his personal jet in 2006.
- U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams accused Carvajal of “[importing] poison to america” in a press release, citing the “tons of doubtless lethal medicine” Carvajal reportedly trafficked to Mexico.
A former Venezuelan spy chief and longtime adviser to the nation’s late chief Hugo Chávez pleaded not responsible Thursday in a New York courtroom to decade-old drug trafficking expenses, a day after his extradition from Spain.
Retired Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal, 63, agreed throughout an preliminary look in Manhattan federal courtroom to stay behind bars whereas his legal professionals put together a bail proposal to current to the choose who will deal with his case. Prosecutors need him to stay behind bars.
Carvajal, in a white shirt and beige pants, didn’t communicate through the transient courtroom continuing besides to acknowledge that he understood his rights and that he might hear an interpreter.
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“Completely,” he mentioned by means of the interpreter in response as to whether he might hear the person by means of his earphones.
Carvajal was delivered to america on Wednesday to face narco-terrorism conspiracy, firearms and drug trafficking expenses.
Prosecutors allege he used his excessive workplace to coordinate the smuggling of roughly 12,300 kilos of cocaine aboard a non-public jet from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006. If convicted of all expenses, Carvajal would face a compulsory minimal sentence of 30 years and as a lot as life in jail.
Retired Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal of Venezuela pleaded not responsible to drug trafficking expenses whereas showing in a Manhattan courtroom. (AP Picture/Manu Fernandez, File)
U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams mentioned in a press release that Carvajal abused his authority as director of Venezuela’s navy intelligence company from 2004 to 2011 “to import poison to america” within the type of “tons of doubtless lethal medicine.”
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram mentioned in a information launch that he “exploited his place for private achieve.”
Outdoors courtroom, his lawyer Zachary Margulis, had a lot to say about his consumer, who suggested Chavez for greater than a decade earlier than rejecting Chavez’s handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, and siding as a substitute together with his U.S. backed opponents.
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Margulis portrayed the U.S. prosecution as not like every other, saying he’d not been knowledgeable of any proof equivalent to textual content messages, emails, wiretapped conversations, prison-call recordings, surveillance video or bodily proof linked to his consumer.
And he mentioned it was uncommon in a drug trafficking case that “there is no such thing as a proof of unexplained wealth.”
“He’s categorically harmless of these expenses,” he mentioned. “Basic Carvajal appears to be like ahead to combating these outrageous expenses in courtroom earlier than an unbiased American jury.”
Margulis, standing exterior the courthouse beside protection lawyer Tess Cohen, mentioned prosecutors had constructed their case “totally on false, uncorroborated statements by determined drug traffickers and corrupt former Venezuelan officers with private {and professional} grudges in opposition to Basic Carvajal.”
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Carvajal’s extradition to the U.S. was lengthy delayed, most just lately by means of appeals. First arrested in Spain in 2019, he disappeared for 2 years whereas on bail after studying that the Spanish Nationwide Court docket was about to rule on his extradition. He was recaptured in September 2021.
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