Spain Arrests Former Venezuela Intelligence Chief on U.S. Extradition for Narcotics Charges

On September 10, 2021, United States law enforcement announced that the Spanish police arrested the day before former Venezuelan official Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, a/k/a “El Pollo” in Madrid, Spain.  His arrest responded to the U.S. extradition request pursuant to an indictment charging Carvajal Barrios with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy and a conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S., including a 5.6-ton shipment of cocaine sent from Venezuela to Mexico in April 2006, along with related firearm offenses.  Spanish authorities initially arrested Carvajal Barrios in April 2019.  Later that year, the Spanish National Court approved Carvajal Barrios’s extradition to the U.S.  Thereafter, Carvajal Barrios became a fugitive.[1]