Venezuelan general who tried to overthrow Nicolás Maduro awaits sentencing in United States

With his strong military bearing, his determined step and his firm handshake, Cleaver Alcala Still looks like Retired Major General of the Venezuelan ArmyEven though he now only wears khaki gel pants.

Alcala, a fierce opponent of Venezuelan socialist President Nicolás Maduro who twice attempted coups against him, is in an upstate New York penitentiary. He is awaiting sentencing Thursday on unrelated federal charges of supplying weapons to drug-funded rebels, which could put him in prison for up to three decades.

“The only thing I regret is that my family has suffered so much because of my love for Venezuela,” Alcala, 62, told the agency. Ap In his first visit behind bars. “I take full responsibility for my actions, but they are the ones who pay the consequences.”

The interview took place earlier this month, two days before the shocking court testimony, which had nothing to do with the crimes Alcala pleaded guilty to.

In new testimony, the convicted drug traffickers alleged they saw Alcala taking advantage of his position as one of Venezuela’s most powerful military officers two decades ago. Dirt runways provide a safe route for shipments of tons of cocaine to border checkpoints and major airports.

In return, they say they paid him millions of dollars in bribes: at one point he charged $150,000 for each cocaine-laden flight that left for Central America.

As part of a plea deal reached last year, prosecutors dropped all drug charges against Alcala. Instead, they dropped just two counts of supplying weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

Prosecutors are now asking federal judge Alvin Hellerstein to consider previously dismissed charges and unproven drug trafficking charges when sentencing. Alcala was surprised when he pleaded guilty to lesser crimes.

“The accused was not just a general following orders”Prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum where they recommended a 30-year sentence. “He collected millions of dollars in cocaine kickbacks to allow and help transport a lot of poison into this country.”

Adam Isaacson, a longtime analyst of armed conflict in the Andes for the NGO Washington Office on Latin America, said a harsh sentence for Alcala would prevent other members of the Venezuelan military — whose support is critical to Maduro’s grip on power — from breaking ranks.

“can complicate any transition from dictatorship to democracyIsaacson opined. “With no leniency from the United States for past crimes, the Maduro regime can point to Alcala as an example of the high price that anyone who considers betrayal will pay.”

Isaacson noted that prosecutors in Alcala’s case are seeking a minimum of 30 years, which is more than the average of 12 years served by a group of Colombian paramilitary leaders extradited to the United States in 2008 on drug-trafficking charges.

Alcala surrendered in Colombia in 2020 to face federal charges that he, Maduro and a dozen other military and political leaders led an expanding illegal alliance to turn Venezuela into a launching pad to flood the United States with cocaine. According to the epaulettes on the uniforms of high-ranking military officers, they are all believed to be members of what US authorities call the “Cartel of the Sons”.

Before laying down arms as part of a 2016 peace deal, the FARC regularly used Venezuela’s porous border region as a safe haven and hub for cocaine shipments bound for the United States. often with the support or at least the connivance of Venezuelan security forces.

During a two-day hearing earlier this month, Hellerstein heard testimony from two associates of a major Venezuelan drug trafficker and a former police officer who was a well-paid informant for the DEA drug agency.

All three witnesses described Alcala as a merchant whose power far exceeded his rank and formal responsibilities in the army.

But Alcala’s public defenders have disputed that description. They pointed out He lived openly in Colombia for years before his arrestIn a small rental apartment, a beat-up Nissan and barely $3,000 in his bank account.

“He was not living the life of a corrupt Latin American leader in exile, rich off the loot of money earned through corruption,” his lawyers wrote in a pre-sentence memo seeking just six years behind bars.

He argues that the drug charges against him lack credibility and are an innocent attempt by the traffickers he attacked to seek revenge against the general or to collect part of the $10 million reward the United States offered for his arrest and conviction.

One witness mentioned Alcala nine years after the cooperation agreement with the DEA and only nine years after Alcala’s arrest.

“At some point did you become a better man?” Hellerstein jokingly told a witness that He admitted to hiring corrupt police officers to rob his grandmother and lying to his responsible operatives in the United States about the threats he made to his associates in Miami.

Then there’s Alcala’s role as an avowed foe of Maduro, whom the United States blames for destroying democracy and the country’s oil-rich economy.

Around the same time Alcala was plotting against Maduro, the Trump administration was offering a $15 million reward for Maduro’s capture and actively urging members of the military to rebel.

Alcala opposed Maduro from the moment he took over the Bolivarian revolution from Hugo Chávez, who died of cancer in 2013, the same year Alcala retired from the military. Their dissent intensified in 2017 when, with the United States government informed, He leveraged his influence in the Venezuelan officer corps to rally troops to overthrow Maduro.

“These were not theoretical discussions about democratic change, they were plans for an armed uprising against the regime and its leadership,” their lawyers wrote.

The 2017 Barracks uprising failed and ended with the arrest of several conspirators. Alcala managed to escape across the border into Colombia, where he contacted the CIA.

A few years later, he would try again, this time in coordination with the democratic opposition led by Juan Guaido, whom the United States recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate leader in 2019.

Alcala’s comrade-in-arms in his gruesome final battle was Jordan Gaudreau, a former American Green Beret and decorated veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Investigation of Ap 2020 detailed how two like-minded warriors teamed up to train a motley group of Venezuelan military deserters in secret camps in Colombia.

Alcala’s arrest destroyed any hope of success for the rebellion.

“Traitor, renegade, drug trafficker,” Maduro boasted after his arrest. “The devil pays you the way the devil knows how.”

Alcala’s bumpy roads are like an authentic Venezuelan tour. Unlike many of Maduro’s civilian opponents, who come from Venezuela’s white elite minority, Alcala was born into poverty and raised by his grandmother after being orphaned at a young age, when he was abandoned by his father and his mother died.

To provide some structure, he and two brothers were sent to the army. He ranked first in his class and impressed his colleagues—including Chavez, a charismatic tank commander and instructor—with his physical and mental endurance. The person closest to him was his older brother Carlos Alcala, whom Chávez would name as head of the army and until recently served as Maduro’s ambassador to Iran.

Even in prison, Alcala is still a fighter. He said he has used his time behind bars to reflect on his decisions, mistakes and regrets. He has read more than 200 books — most of them history books — and maintains a battle-ready body: He runs 5 miles (8 kilometers) on a treadmill every day.

“I haven’t run this fast since I was a lieutenant,” he jokes about his personal best pace: 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) in 7 minutes. “The guards look at me like I’m crazy.”

(AP)