The Diplomat
The Plenary of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court agreed yesterday to ask the United States for guarantees regarding the treatment that would be given to the former head of Intelligence of the Venezuelan Government Hugo ‘El Pollo Carvajal’, in the event that he is handed over, a procedure that keeps his extradition paralysed.
Legal sources explained to Europa Press that the North American country now has a maximum of 45 days to respond to this request. It is a procedure that forced the National Court to suspend his surrender last Friday, just one day after giving the green light to the request.
The same sources pointed out that this order – which was requested by Carvajal’s defence – did exist, although it had not been notified until now. This formalism is a sort of guarantee that the rights of ‘El Pollo’ will be respected in the United States.
The former head of Venezuelan intelligence pointed last Wednesday to Podemos co-founders Juan Carlos Monedero and Carolina Bescansa as recipients of funds that would have come to the ‘purple’ formation from Cuba and Venezuela, while he has provided a list of witnesses who could support his accusations, in the framework of the statement he gave on Wednesday as a witness before the judge of the Audiencia Nacional (AN) Manuel García-Castellón.
Carvajal testified for more than an hour before the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6 in a case on the alleged illegal financing of Podemos that the magistrate reopened last week, precisely, as a result of the contributions made by the Venezuelan military, both orally in his first statement on September 20 and through the documents that he has been delivering to García-Castellón in this time to give documentary support to his words.
According to legal sources consulted by Europa Press, Carvajal described the operation by which the money from Cuba and Venezuela would have filled the ‘purple’ coffers and pointed to Monedero and Bescansa as recipients of it.
