Nielson de Souza Vilela, lawyer who defended Hugo “el Pollo” Carvajal, former head of military intelligence during the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, He was found dead inside his home, located in Madrid, Spain.
The body of the 40-year-old lawyer appeared last Thursday in the storage room of the building where he lived. Antena 3 reported that, although the official causes of death have not been made public, police sources point to a possible suicide.
The lawyer represented Hugo Carvajalwho faces a possible sentence in the United States.
Carvajal, 65, pleaded guilty in June last year to charges of conspiracy to narcoterrorism for the benefit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), importation of cocaine, as well as possession and conspiracy to use firearms. The former official faces a possible sentence of life imprisonment, the maximum penalty contemplated for these crimes.
His judicial process, which has suffered multiple postponements, is part of a broader accusation presented by the United States in 2020. The now deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was also charged; the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello; and other high officials, who are attributed participation in a narco-terrorist conspiracy.
Since January, Maduro has been detained in a federal prison in New York with his wife, Cilia Flores, both accused by the US justice system of narcoterrorism, illicit possession of weapons and conspiracy to commit torture.
Hugo “el Pollo” Carvajal as an informant
Carvajal was close to the late president Hugo Chávez since they were in the army. He directed the Dgcim, an agency renowned for complaints of torture and political detentions. He broke relations with Maduro in 2019 and announced his support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó. After that he fled to Spain.
While in exile, he began to make complaints against Maduro on a personal blog and on social networks. In an interview offered to The New York Times He said Maduro’s circle was involved in drug trafficking and terrorism.
Carvajal had been in the crosshairs of US authorities for years. In 2008, Joe Biden’s administration sanctioned him for “materially assisting the drug trafficking activities” of the FARC.
The Justice Department charged him in federal court in April 2019 for attempting to ship 5.6 tons of cocaine to the United States in 2006 and providing weapons and explosives to the FARC. He remained hidden in Spain, even undergoing plastic surgery to change his image. Finally, Spanish authorities extradited him to the United States in 2023.
