Former Venezuelan spymaster pleads guilty to US drug trafficking charges
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Honduras, US discuss immigration, security after tense start to relations under Trump administration
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem met with Honduran President Xiomara Castro. The two discussed immigration and border security in their first meeting. Castro had previously rejected President Donald Trump’s calls for ramped up deportations. Noem also met with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves in San Jose, where she signed a letter reaffirming the U.S.’s support for Costa Rica’s bid to join the Global Entry program. She was headed next to Guatemala where she was scheduled to meet with President Bernardo Arévalo on Thursday. The U.s. has been signing agreements across the region for governments to collect and share biometric data on people entering their countries. But Honduras was notably left off Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip through the region in February.
Noem was the first Trump Cabinet member to visit Honduras.
The two leaders did not make comments to the press after their meeting. But Honduras Foreign Affairs Minister Javier Bú Soto later said that Honduras signed a letter of intent toward reaching an agreement on sharing biometric data from people transiting the country with the U.S. government. The U.S. has signed similar agreements with other governments across the region.
The two governments also signed an agreement related to migrants seeking protection in Honduras, he said, though he did not explain what it entailed.
“We are going to continue mutually collaborating on issues of migration security, border security and the fight against drug trafficking,” Bú Soto said.
Noem was headed next to Guatemala where she was scheduled to meet with President Bernardo Arévalo on Thursday.
Relations between the U.S. and Castro’s administration had been tense since she ordered the end of the longstanding extradition treaty last year. It was under that treaty that Castro sent her predecessor ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández to the United States to be tried on drug trafficking charges.
The U.S. ambassador at the time had angered Castro by criticizing the visit of Honduran officials to Venezuela to meet with that country’s longtime defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, who has been indicted on drug trafficking charges by the U.S.
Then in January, Castro raised the possibility of ending Honduras’ cooperation with the U.S. military if Trump followed through on his promised mass deportations.
The main U.S. military presence in Honduras is at Soto Cano Air Base outside the capital. While it is a Honduran base, the U.S. has maintained a significant presence there since 1983 and it has become a key U.S. launching point for humanitarian and anti-drug missions in Central America.
Castro eventually reversed course earlier this year on the extradition treaty and restored the agreement after negotiations with the Trump administration.
But Honduras was notably left off U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip through the region in February.
Earlier Wednesday, Noem met with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves in San Jose. They signed a letter reaffirming the U.S. support for Costa Rica’s bid to join the Global Entry program. That is a program run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which allows certain passengers who applied to the program and are prescreened to get expedited entry into the U.S.
Noem also said the U.S. would help Chaves advance toward his goal of scanning all people and goods entering Costa Rica. The U.S. has been signing agreements across the region for governments to collect and share biometric data on people entering their countries.
“(Costa Rica) will give us the most advanced information that we need to know on people who could come into our countries that could do us harm, but also how to prevent them from spreading their criminality and their evil across the world,” Noem said.
Noem visited Panama on Tuesday, where she met with President José Raúl Mulino. The U.S. government has designated $14 million for a repatriation program where Panama flies migrants back to their countries.
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AP journalist Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Former Venezuela spymaster pleads guilty to narcoterrorism charge ahead of trial
Retired Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal was extradited from Spain in 2023 after more than a decade on the run from U.S. law enforcement. Prosecutors said they believe federal sentencing guidelines call for the 65-year-old CarVajal to serve a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison. He pleaded guilty in court to all four criminal counts, including narco-terrorism, in an indictment accusing him of leading a cartel made up of senior Venezuelan military officers that attempted to “flood” the U.K. with cocaine in cahoots with leftist guerrillas from Colombia. Nicknamed “El Pollo,” Spanish for “the chicken,’ Carvjal advised Chavez for over a decade. He later broke with Maduro, Chavez’s handpicked successor, and threw his support behind the U-S.-backed political opposition — in dramatic fashion. He was captured hiding out in a Madrid apartment after he defied a Spanish extradition order and disappeared.
MIAMI — A former Venezuelan spymaster who was close to the country’s late President Hugo Chavez pleaded guilty Wednesday to drug trafficking charges a week before his trial was set to begin in a Manhattan federal court.
Retired Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal was extradited from Spain in 2023 after more than a decade on the run from U.S. law enforcement, including a botched arrest in Aruba while he was serving as a diplomat representing current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
Carvajal pleaded guilty in court to all four criminal counts, including narco-terrorism, in an indictment accusing him of leading a cartel made up of senior Venezuelan military officers that attempted to “flood” the U.S. with cocaine in cahoots with leftist guerrillas from neighboring Colombia.
In a letter this week to defense counsel, prosecutors said they believe federal sentencing guidelines call for the 65-year-old Carvajal to serve a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison.
Nicknamed “El Pollo,” Spanish for “the chicken,” Carvajal advised Chavez for more than a decade. He later broke with Maduro, Chavez’s handpicked successor, and threw his support behind the U.S.-backed political opposition — in dramatic fashion.
In a recording made from an undisclosed location, Carvajal called on his former military cohorts to rebel a month into mass protests seeking to replace Maduro with lawmaker Juan Guaido, whom the first Trump administration recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate leader as head of the democratically elected National Assembly.
The hoped-for barracks revolt never materialized, and Carvajal fled to Spain. In 2021 he was captured hiding out in a Madrid apartment after he defied a Spanish extradition order and disappeared.
Carvajal’s straight-up guilty plea, without any promise of leniency, could be part of a gamble to win credit down the line for cooperating with U.S. efforts against a top foreign adversary that sits atop the world’s largest petroleum reserves.
Although Carvajal has been out of power for years, his backers say he can provide potentially valuable insights on the inner workings of the spread of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua into the U.S. and spying activities of the Maduro-allied governments of Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
He may also be angling for Trump’s attention with information about voting technology company Smartmatic. One of Carvajal’s deputies was a major player in Venezuela’s electoral authority when the company was getting off the ground.
Florida-based Smartmatic says its global business was decimated when Fox News aired false claims by Trump allies that it helped rig the 2020 U.S. election. One of the company’s Venezuelan founders was later charged in the U.S. in a bribery case involving its work in the Philippines.
Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer in Latin America who oversaw commandos that hunted al-Qaida, sent a public letter this week to Trump urging the Justice Department to delay the start of Carvajal’s trial so officials can debrief the former spymaster.
“He’s no angel, he’s a very bad man,” Berntsen said in an interview. “But we need to defend democracy.”
Carvajal’s attorney, Robert Feitel, said prosecutors announced in court this month that they never extended a plea offer to his client or sought to meet with him.
“I think that was an enormous mistake,” Feitel told The Associated Press while declining further comment. “He has information that is extraordinarily important to our national security and law enforcement.”
In 2011, prosecutors alleged that Carvajal used his office to coordinate the smuggling of approximately 5,600 kilograms (12,300 pounds) of cocaine aboard a jet from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006. In exchange he accepted millions of dollars from drug traffickers, prosecutors said.
He allegedly arranged the shipment as one of the leaders of the so-called Cartel of the Suns — a nod to the sun insignias affixed to the uniforms of senior Venezuelan military officers. The cocaine was sourced by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization and which for years took refuge in Venezuela as it sought to overthrow Colombia’s government.
Carvajal “exploited his position as the director of Venezuela’s military intelligence and abandoned his responsibility to the people of Venezuela in order to intentionally cause harm to the United States,” DEA Acting Administrator Robert Murphy said. “After years of trying to evade law enforcement, (he) will now likely spend the rest of his life in federal prison.”
Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.
Joshua Goodman, The Associated Press
Court of Appeal acquits three of drug trafficking charges
Mashitah Abdullah, Siti Wan Noorzulaikha Yusof and Muhammad Luqman Ramli were previously convicted of trafficking 71.5 grammes of heroin and monoacetylmorphines. A three-judge panel led by Justice Datuk Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali, allowed the appeals by the trio. The Court of Appeal set aside their convictions and sentences imposed by the High Court. The trio were sentenced to 30 years in prison, with Muhammad Luquman also ordered to receive 12 strokes of the cane.
A three-judge panel led by Justice Datuk Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali, allowed the appeals by Mashitah Abdullah, Siti Wan Noorzulaikha Yusof and Muhammad Luqman Ramli, setting aside their convictions and sentences imposed by the High Court.
Justice Ruzima said on Thursday (May 22) that the convictions were unsafe for the appellate court to affirm as the prosecution had failed to establish a common intention among the appellants to commit the offence.
“We find there is a gap in the prosecution’s case as they failed to conclusively prove the existence of custody and control of the bag containing the drugs,” said Justice Ruzima, who presided with Justices Datuk Azizul Azmi Adnan and Datuk Ahmad Kamal Md Shahid.
The Court of Appeal judge (Justice Ruzima) also gave a word of reminder to the trio.
“You have spent your youth in prison, Be careful with what you do and don’t let yourself be used by irresponsible people for their own interests,” he told them.
The courtroom was filled with emotion, as family members seated in the public gallery erupted in joy following the announcement of the verdict.
Mashitah, who will turn 30 in three days time, Siti Wan Noorzulaikha, 26 and Muhammad Luqman, 27, were previously found guilty by the High Court on Jan 31 last year for trafficking 15.9 grammes of heroin and 55.6 grammes of monoacetylmorphines.
They allegedly committed the offence at the pedestrian walkway of the Kuah ferry terminal in Langkawi, Kedah, at 3.30 pm on June 5, 2017.
The High Court had sentenced all three to 30 years in prison, with Muhammad Luqman also ordered to receive 12 strokes of the cane.
According to the facts of the case, a team of police officers conducting surveillance at the terminal detained Muhammad Luqman, who was holding the right handle of a clothing bag while Noorzulaikha was holding the left handle and Mashitah was walking with them.
Lawyers Ahmad Zaharil Muhaiyar and Nurul Syamimi Norazlan represented the women while Muhammad Luqman was represented by counsel Datuk Naran Singh. Deputy Public Prosecutor Roshan Karthi Kayan appeared for the prosecution. – Bernama