Sentenced former general of ex-President Hugo Chavez: Cliver Alcala
The former general of ex-president Hugo Chávez, Cliver Alcalá Cordones, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for drug and arms trafficking.
After a long trial period, finally, the former general of President Hugo Chávez, Cliver Alcalá, was sentenced after being found guilty.
A U.S. court sentenced the general of ex-President Hugo Chavez, Clíver Alcalá, a Venezuelan military officer who became commander of the Guayana region.
Alcalá is part of the list of officials accused in the North American country for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering.
Theformer general of ex-president Hugo Chávez, Cliver Alcalá Cordones was sentenced on Monday to more than 21 years in prison in the United States for supplying weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein at a hearing in Manhattan federal court.
It should be recalled that, in mid January, it was known that the U.S. prosecutors asked the justice system that the former general of former President Hugo Chávez, Cliver Alcalá Cordones, receive 30 years in prison for two federal crimes: drug trafficking and delivery of weapons to the Colombian guerrilla FARC.
However, Alcalá did not admit to any charges related to drug trafficking as part of his final agreement.
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Sentenced former general of ex-President Hugo Chavez, Cliver Alcala Cordones
His lawyers urged Hellerstein to consider the ex-general’s break with the Maduro government in 2013 and his role in organizing, from neighboring Colombia, an unsuccessful effort to overthrow Maduro in 2020.
Prosecutors said Alcala’s actions since 2013 did not warrant leniency.
Alcala went on to command the Guayana regional command, and as he has confessed at trial, he used his rank and responsibilities in Venezuela to deliver weapons to the guerrillas.
The former general of ex-president Hugo Chávez, Cliver Alcalá Cordones, pleaded guilty last July of having delivered grenade launchers and grenades to alias “Iván Márquez”, leader of the Second Marquetalia (FARC dissidents) and “Timochenko”, allegedly by order of the government of Hugo Chávez, as revealed by the AP agency based on documents from a court in New York.
Among the facts affirmed by the general is that he supported and protected the FARC for years and favored their drug trafficking through the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía. In the trial, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of narco-terrorism.
His defenders explained that the reduction of the original charges against Alcalá Cordones prevented him from facing a minimum sentence of 50 years in prison.
Some press versions linking him to the preparation of an armed plan that would seek to overthrow Maduro, in 2019, Alcalá Cordones turned himself in to the DEA in Colombia, was extradited and agreed to collaborate with the United States, which had offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
Judge Hellerstein agreed in 2022 to a request by US prosecutors to keep classified documents about Venezuela secret in the Alcalá Cordones case, which they said would cause “serious damage to national security”.
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Alcalá Cordones, 62 years old, graduated from the Venezuelan Military Academy and is identified as one of the participants of the failed coup d’état commanded in 1992 by Chávez, when he was a lieutenant colonel and head of a parachute brigade.
Another of the actions of the former general of ex-president Hugo Chávez, Cliver Alcalá Cordones, was that he headed the intervention of the Metropolitan Police of Caracas, in 2002, and occupied the command of the military garrison of Valencia and also that of Maracay. He also commanded the Guayana integral defense region (REDI-Guayana).
