Venezuela’s former military intelligence chief under President Hugo Chavez was extradited from Spain to the United States on Wednesday, where he faces a serious prison sentence for drug trafficking, and will appear before a judge on Thursday, AFP reported.

63-year-old Hugo Carvajal was wanted by the American authorities for several years.

According to New York prosecutors, he used his position as head of military intelligence to coordinate the shipment from Venezuela to Mexico of nearly 5.6 tons of cocaine destined for the United States in 2006.

The former official is also suspected of having evidence against Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro.

He is scheduled to appear before a judge in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement. Hugo Carvajal faces life imprisonment.

Justice accuses him of “using his authority as director of Venezuelan military intelligence to corrupt Venezuelan institutions, brutalize the Venezuelan population and import poison into the United States,” said Damian Williams.

He also accuses Carvajal of collaborating with the FARC, a former revolutionary guerrilla group in Colombia, in the cocaine trade.

The extradition comes almost a week after it was reported that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had rejected an appeal by this close associate of the former president of Venezuela, who was in power from 1999 to 2013.

The ECtHR found that Hugo Carvajal “has not demonstrated that he faces a real risk of being sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (…) in the event of his extradition.”

Carvajal’s lawyer, Maria Dolores de Arguelles, and Spanish judicial sources confirmed to AFP earlier on Wednesday that he had left Spain for the United States, without being able to say with certainty his exact destination.

The High Court of National Audience in Madrid suspended the extradition proceedings of Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios in March 2022 due to the latter’s appeal to the ECtHR, just months after giving the final green light to his extradition to the United States.

A Venezuelan nicknamed “El Pollo” (The Chicken) was first arrested by the Spanish police in April 2019. But then a justice denied his extradition and released him on the grounds that the United States’ request was “politically motivated.”

After an appeal by the prosecutor’s office, the National Court finally reconsidered its decision, but in the meantime Carvajal fled. He was finally arrested in Madrid in September 2022 after almost two years of persecution.

The former general was dismissed from the Venezuelan army by the decision of the head of state, Nicolás Maduro, due to the fact that in early 2019 he went to rally with the opponent Juan Guaido. He fled Venezuela by sea to the Dominican Republic before reaching Spain.