A lawyer for Venezuela’s former spy chief said he planned to argue in a U.S. court that his client could not be prosecuted for his alleged role in a state-backed drug cartel, because he has “sovereign immunity” as a representative of a foreign government.
The lawyer for the former Venezuelan official, Hugo Carvajal Barrios, said he would also argue that his client’s 2023 extradition to the U.S. was illegal, according to a court transcript from November, which has only now been made public.
Known as “El Pollo,” or “The Chicken,” Carvajal served as director of military intelligence under Venezuela’s leftist leader Hugo Chavez, as well as his successor and current president, Nicolas Maduro.
American prosecutors accuse Carvajal of helping lead a government-run cocaine trafficking group known as the Cartel de los Soles, or “Cartel of the Suns.” The name comes from insignias on the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials.
Carvajal’s lawyer, Robert Feitel, told the District Court of New York that he planned to file a motion “to challenge my client's extradition,” according to the newly-released transcript.
“I believe I will file another motion… asserting a sovereign immunity defense,” Feitel said in a November 12 “conference,” where lawyers from both sides meet and discuss a case with a judge before it goes to trial.
While Carvajal was no longer with the Venezuelan government at the time he was arrested, his alleged crimes occurred during his tenure as head of intelligence.
The New York court set a deadline of January 17 for parties to file their motions. Any opposition submissions to the motions, and the replies to those, had to be filed by February 21. The outcome of that process is unknown, as the court has not made the documents available.
Feitel did not respond to a request for comment.
Carvajal’s long legal journey to the U.S. began in 2014, when he was Venezuela’s consul in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island. The U.S. had requested Carvajal’s extradition, but a Netherlands court ruled that he had diplomatic immunity, and he was allowed to fly home to Venezuela.
Carvajal was kicked out of the Venezuelan armed forces in 2019, and charged with treason for supporting the U.S.-backed opposition member Juan Guaido. He then fled to Spain, entering under a fake identity.
Spanish authorities arrested Carvajal on an Interpol warrant in April 2019, a month after he arrived in the country. They put him under house arrest, but he escaped and went missing for more than a year before being found in September 2021 hiding out in Madrid.
Spain extradited Carvajal in 2023 to the U.S., where he was charged with “narco-terrorism conspiracy,” as well as weapons and other drug trafficking offences. Prosecutors focused specifically on a 2006 attempt to send “a 5.6-ton cocaine shipment from Venezuela” to the U.S. on a private jet, which was apprehended during a stopover in Mexico.
The indictment alleged that Carvajal had been one of the leaders of the Cártel de Los Soles since at least 1999, and that they sought “to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users.”
A judge has set a date for Carvajal’s trial to begin on June 30.
