Spanish court orders former Venezuelan spy chief's extradition to US

The Spanish judiciary has ordered the extradition of the former head of Venezuela's military intelligence service, Hugo Carvajal, to the US, the National Court of Justice in Madrid announced on Thursday.

The 61-year-old Carvajal is accused by the US authorities of drug trafficking and of collaborating with the former Colombian paramilitary group FARC.

No date has yet been set for the extradition.

Carvajal has been behind bars in Estremera prison, about 75 kilometres south-east of Madrid, for about a month. He was tracked down to a flat in Madrid by the Spanish police on September 9 in a joint operation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

He subsequently applied for asylum in Spain but was rejected by the Interior Ministry.

Carvajal can still appeal the court decision, but experts rate his chance of success as poor.

This was Carvajal's second arrest in Spain. After entering the country on a fake passport, the former military man and politician was first arrested in Madrid in April 2019.

Changed sides

At the time, a court refused to extradite him to the US and he was subsequently released without charge. By the time a higher court ruled shortly afterwards that he should be extradited after all, Carvajal had gone into hiding.

At the beginning of 2019, Carvajal, a long-time advisor to late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, caused a stir when he unexpectedly changed sides in the power struggle between Venezuela's left-wing government and the country's interim president Juan Guaido.

In a video posted on Twitter, Carvajal accused President Nicolas Maduro of being responsible for the dire economic crisis in Venezuela.

Spanish media reports have speculated that the US interest in Carvajal stems from the fact that he knows more of "the most important secrets" of the Chavez era than anyone else.