CARACAS, Venezuela – One of the Venezuelan high-ranking officers accused of drug trafficking and money laundering and of helping a Colombian narco-terrorist organization used social media to release a video on Thursday asking embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
Hugo Carvajal, a 58-year-old socialist congressman, spent more than three decades in the Venezuelan military, and he guarded the country's secrets as the head of the military intelligence service from 2004 to 2011.
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With the message recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president, Carvajal joins the ranks of powerful Chavistas who are abandoning Maduro to accept U.S. amnesty. He sent a public message to Maduro.
"You have killed hundreds of young people in the streets for trying to claim the rights you stole," Carvajal said to Maduro during the video. "This is without even counting those who have died due to the lack of medicines and security."
Carvajal was also linked to the alleged torture and execution of two members of the Colombian military. Maduro fought for Carvajal's return when Dutch authorities arrested him in Aruba on a U.S. warrant in 2014. The video didn't mention the international incident, but it did include a message to the generals who remain loyal to Maduro's order not to allow U.S. aid into Venezuela.
"How is it that having the power to allow the entry of international humanitarian aid to our country to save lives, you would decide not to?" Carvajal said to the Venezuelan generals. "Would you be so inhuman? So hypnotized?"
Carvajal has said that although he was aware of the drug trafficking and corruption he was never a part of it. He has also accused Venezuelan billionaire Raul Gorrin, the co-owner of TV network Globovision, of offering to pay him a $10 million bribe.
Gorrin is wanted for money laundering in a case in Miami's federal court with links to real estate properties in the opulent neighborhoods of Coco Plum and Wellington in South Florida. Gorrin was also accused of being involved in a scheme to defraud the Venezuelan government.
Carvajal's video was released a few days after President Donald Trump asked Venezuelan officials to turn their backs on Maduro this week or "lose everything."