Awkward

A Venezuelan "influential military figure" who abandoned Maduro for the US pet Juan Guaidó has been arrested in Spain. On a US warrant.

Venezuela's longtime spy chief was arrested on Friday in Madrid by Spanish police acting on a United States warrant for allegedly trafficking tonnes of cocaine.

Hugo Carvajal, who, for more than a decade, advised late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and headed the country's security apparatus, recently became the most influential military figure to declare his loyalty to opposition leader Juan Guaido.

[...]

Friday's arrest is a result of a 2014 indictment by the Southern District of New York in which the US Attorney's Office accuses Carvajal of having "coordinated the transportation of approximately 5,600 kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico" in 2006.

[...]

A spokeswoman with Spain's National Court, which handles extradition cases, said that Carvajal would testify on Saturday before Judge Alejandro Abascal in Madrid. He can either accept the extradition to the US or fight it before the court.

  alJazeera

That'll be a kind of a sticky wicket for us if he accepts.

Carvajal, who climbed the ranks in Venezuela since he befriended Chavez in the early 1980s, is no stranger to US law enforcement agencies.

In previous indictments, authorities also named Carvajal as part of several high-ranking Venezuelan military and law enforcement officials who provided a haven to major drug traffickers from neighbouring Colombia.

[...]

In 2014, he became the highest-ranking Venezuelan official ever arrested on a US drug warrant. But authorities in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, where Carvajal was serving as Venezuela's consul, refused to extradite him.

[...]

In mid-February, when Carvajal announced his support for Guaido in a video distributed on social media, the former spy chief said Venezuela's military was in as ramshackle a state as the nation as a whole.

"We can't allow an army, in the hands of a few generals subjugated to Cuban instructions, to become the biggest collaborator of a dictatorial government that has plagued people with misery," he said at the time, asking fellow military to join him.

As recently as two days ago, Carvajal remained hopeful that other former peers would follow his steps.

[...]

The opposition saw Carvajal's criticism of Venezuela's current government as a possible stimulus to prod other military figures to defect, but the country's armed forces have remained largely loyal to current President Nicolas Maduro.

And of the few who defected to Guaidó, we got one arrested.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.