The former Chavista general Cliver Antonio Alcalawho has become an opponent of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was sentenced this Monday in New York to 21 years and eight months in prison for aiding the Venezuelan President FARCsaid the US Department of Justice.
Alcalá surrendered to U.S. authorities in Colombia in 2020 after the United States charged about fifteen senior Venezuelan officials with “narcoterrorism,” including Maduro, the powerful Chavista leader. God given hair and the former Venezuelan intelligence chief Hugo “Chicken” Carvajal.
The American justice system accused Alcalá of being a collaborator of Hugo ChavezMaduro’s predecessor, for helping the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) since 2006, which signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government in 2016.
He supplied them with weapons, “even directly to high-ranking leaders” such as Luciano Marín Arango, aka Iván Márquez and Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, alias Timochenkothe Justice Department reported in a statement.
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In addition, he “directly participated in the distribution of cocaine,” met with some of South America’s largest drug traffickers, facilitated the movement of FARC members and prevented their imprisonment, Washington points out.
In return, Alcala “Received millions of dollars in cocaine-related bribes,” the court said.
As a high-ranking member of the Venezuelan army and the Los Soles cartel, which consists of Venezuelan soldiers, Alcalá and his associates “helped the FARC arm its members and send tons of drugs to the United States,” the U.S. attorney said Damian Williams quoted in the statement.
“He will now spend more than two decades in a US prison,” he added.
In June, the 62-year-old former general pleaded guilty to illegal arms transfer and “providing material support to a foreign organization designated as terrorist.”
Alcalá left the army in 2013 and fled to Turkey Colombia and supported the then leader of the Venezuelan opposition Juan Guaidó.
In addition to the prison sentence, Alcalá was sentenced to three years of supervised release.
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