Ap, Afp and Sputnik
La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, December 13, 2024, p. 22
La Paz., Bolivia yesterday handed over to the United States Maximiliano Dávila, former anti-drug chief of the Evo Morales government, who must answer before a court in that country for drug trafficking charges, the Government Ministry reported.
In repudiation of the extradition, Morales asserted in a message on X: “Bolivia is once again a colony of the United States.
The Bolivians are handed over to the US empire, violating international agreements, without first being tried in their homeland, where they allegedly committed crimes.
Meanwhile, the director of the Penitentiary Regime, Juan Carloslíneas reported: A plane has arrived with all the logistics to extradite Maximiliano Dávila… we have delivered itreported the official outside the prison where Dávila had been held since January of last year.
Now it is in the hands of the United Stateshe added.
Dávila, 59, was director of the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking during the government of Evo Morales (2006-2019). Dressed in black sportswear, Dávila boarded the plane in a quick and reserved operation. In 2022, the United States Department of State announced a reward of up to $5 million for anyone who provided information that would help bring Dávila to justice, who has repeatedly denied the accusations against him. The former official was arrested shortly after in Bolivia.
According to US justice, Dávila used his position in the bureaucracy to allegedly protecting planes used to transport cocaine to the United States.
It was also claimed that he was involved in money laundering, association to use and carry machine guns and drug trafficking before and during his leadership in the organization. At the end of November, the Bolivian Supreme Court of Justice approved his immediate extradition to the United States.
Dávila has denied his links to drug trafficking in a letter and his defense denounced that his rights were violated.
In the recent decade, at least five former anti-drug police chiefs have been denounced and investigated for protecting drug lords, although there have been no convictions in Bolivia.
The Andean country has not had a United States ambassador since 2008 when the Morales government expelled that country’s diplomatic chief.
In response, the US government did the same with the Bolivian ambassador.
