Bolivia’s highest courtroom on Wednesday authorised the extradition of the nation’s former high anti-narcotics official to the US to face expenses of trafficking narcotics.
Maximiliano Dávila Pérez briefly served as Bolivia’s high counter-narcotics official in 2019, earlier than then president Evo Morales resigned. He later served as a police commander in Bolivia beneath the federal government of the present president, Luis Arce.
In January 2022, Dávila was arrested in Bolivia, and a month later the US justice division unsealed expenses in a Manhattan federal courtroom accusing him of conspiring to import cocaine from Bolivia and Peru into the US, and of utilizing weapons associated to the alleged drug trafficking.
The US state division provided a reward of as much as $5m for his seize, accusing him of utilizing his place to guard planes that transported cocaine. He was arrested by Bolivian officers that yr.
In 2019, Dávila was the pinnacle of the Bolivian particular forces for the combat towards drug trafficking, the nation’s equal of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, beneath then president Morales. After Morales resigned, a rightwing president took energy and ousted Dávila.
When Arce – who had been aligned with Morales – then took the presidency in 2020, Dávila got here again to work within the authorities, serving as a police commander overseeing a area the place coca – the precursor to cocaine – is grown. That yr, press experiences stated Dávila was at an airport in northern Bolivia concurrently the departure of a aircraft carrying cocaine, which was later intercepted by Mexican authorities.
Dávila faces further “illicit enrichment” expenses in Bolivia and for allegedly having “sure hyperlinks” to drug trafficking, Bolivia’s inside minister stated. He was arrested in 2022 as he tried to flee to Argentina.
Earlier this yr, Morales and Arce turned bitter political foes. Though Dávila labored beneath each presidents, Arce supporters are utilizing Wednesday’s ruling on extraditing Dávila to accuse Morales of wrongdoing. Morales is searching for to run for president subsequent yr.
In 2008, Morales kicked out the US ambassador and the DEA from Bolivia, limiting the US authorities’s drug conflict operations. In flip, the Bush administration additionally expelled the Bolivian ambassador. The US and Bolivia nonetheless have an extradition treaty, nonetheless, which was signed in 1995.
It’s unclear when Dávila will probably be extradited. His legal professionals, cited by the Related Press, stated the excessive courtroom’s choice is a “severe violation of human rights”.
Supply hyperlink
