The FARC-supporting Colonel and Aruba: the Netherlands answers

Our friend Alpha placed a link with the answers to several questions the foreign minister of the Netherlands had to answer with regards to the Carvajal affair. It seems one of the opposition deputies in the Netherlands did ask the two questions I posted earlier. There are three pdf documents here (in Dutch). 

The Dutch are well-known for their role in Sebrenica. Here a picture of Dutchbat

Minister Frans Timmermans admits the Netherlands has declared Hugo Carvajal persona non grata but based on the article 23 paragraph IV of the Vienna Convention a government is not obliged to explain why it has declared someone persona non grata and it won't explain why in this case.

OK, Mr Timmermans, you don't want to tell us why you are declaring Hugo Carvajal persona non grata but we know why. We just wanted you to write to the world you won't explain it.

Now the Venezuelan opposition needs to spread the word in Venezuela: Hugo Carvajal has been declared persona non grata in the Netherlands and Venezuelans should investigate why exactly.

I will later comment on the rest but if you are impatient and you don't speak Dutch, you can simply copy and paste into a machine translation engine to get some approximation in English.

The documents don't really say much that is new. They just show the usual diplomatic wobbliness. One can read a little bit between the lines, that's it.

We Venezuelans should also ask the Netherlands how far it will go to collaborate with the current regime in Venezuela. From now on we will keep a much better eye on what the Netherlands is doing towards Venezuela. This regime won't last forever and the Netherlands should know what that means.

Questions to Frans Timmermans / Vragen aan Frans Frans Timmermans

I just read the questions to the Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs and his answers about the Carvajal affair. You can read that here (in Dutch). I am no deputy and I am not a Dutch citizen. I am a Venezuelan and a EU citizen. Still, I hope some Dutch journalist or politicians will manage to get the information from the Dutch government.

Mijnheer de minister Frans Timmermans

Als Venezolaan zou ik zo vrij willen zijn om U dit willen vragen:

1. Welke nieuwe informatie had u om van het eerdere standpunt af te wijken, om hierna de immuniteit van Hugo Carvajal te erkennen? (uw antwoord op vraag 3 kan dit niet uitleggen)

2. Wat is nu de reden om Hugo Carvajal ¨persona non grata¨ te verklaren in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden? 

Met grote belangstelling zie ik Uw antwoord tegemoet.

In English:

Dear Minister Frans Timmermans

As Venezuela I want to ask you the following:

1. Which new data did you have that compelled you to change the initial position and recognise Hugo Carvajal's immunity? (your anwer to question 3 doe not tackle this point)

2. What was the reason now to declare Hugo Carvajal "persona non grata" in the Kingdom of the Netherlands? 

I look forward with interest to receiving your response.

This post will go with copy to the Dutch embassy in Venezuela, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to De Telegraaf and to several opposition deputies of the Netherlands and Venezuela.

Hugo Carvajal: persona non grata in the Netherlands (updated)

Hugo Carvajal is back in Venezuela. Why did the Dutch foreign minister Timmermans decide to release Carvajal on a Sunday night, very late in the Netherlands, when his functionaries and the judge in Aruba had said on Friday the detention was legit and Carvajal did not have immunity? Why so soon in spite of the request for extradition by NATO partner USA? Did Carvajal have immunity even if he presented a false passport? Were the US over-reacting thinking that false passport would be enough to get Carvajal or was it fair to consider the Dutch should have sent the man to the USA?

Timmermans

The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf says that according to an officer in Oranestad (Aruba) the order to liberate the retired general came from the foreign minister Timmermans himself. So: the man in charge of the foreign relations for the  Kingdom of the Netherlands took the decision to liberate a man who

1. came in with a false passport, 
2. had over $20000 with him and had not declared that money
3. had not received the placet to become a consul, 
4. was accused by the US of having tortured and murdered two Colombian officials, of having helped a terrorist organisation and being responsible for cocaine trafficking.

Why?

According to the Aruba officer Timmermans departed from the position of his functionaries based on "new information". Timmermans took the people in Aruba by surprise.

Venezuela's regime flew Carvajal directly to Caracas, where he was received by Maduro like a hero in front of masses of Chavistas gathering for the PSUV Congress. The state TV in Venezuela said "the Netherlands has recognised it violated the Vienna Convention".

The Venezuelan government hasn't said Netherlands has declared Carvajal persona non grata. He had to leave Aruba as soon as possible and that he will never be welcome in the Netherlands.

Some hypothesis:

• The Netherlands only wanted to send a message that they didn't want a man with the history of Carvajal as consul. But: why the whole trouble?
• Netherlands is afraid of what the mafiosi could do in the ABC islands 
• Any other hypothesis? 

If you read Dutch, Alpha has collected some general information about this case.

Dutch in Sebrenica

Hugo Carvajal, a perspective

In January 2014 one of the best known Dutch newspapers, De Telegraaf, published an article about  the retired general Hugo Carvajal. A few of the issues it stated were:

• Aruba is worried about the nomination of Carvajal, a general suspected of being involved in drug dealings as Venezuelan consul
• Carvajal has been linked to the torture and killing of two Colombian military men
• The US had him in the Clinton list since 2008 in relation to drug trafficking and the FARC

The Aruban Parliament had been discussing this back then. Opposition deputy Evelyn Wever-Croes from the MEP party had demanded from the Aruban government an explanation. The government responded it was up to Den Haag to decide whether to accept or not the man as a consul. 

Maduro had signed that nomination 16 January of 2014.

There are lots of Venezuelan "diplomats" in the Netherlands and in the ABC islands and it seems incredible none of them read that article. Why was Carvajal going to Aruba at this stage in a private airplane?

Hugo Carvajal was born in 1960. There are two versions about his birth place: Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui or Viejo Fresco, close to Maturín, in the Western Llanos (not far from where Diosdado Cabello was born). I believe the right location is the latter. His sister, Wilma Carvajal, is the mayor of the Cedeño municipality, close to Maturín. She won over Pedro Emilio Briceño. I mentioned Briceño's clan in another post about gangsters from the Maturín region. Nepotism was always an issue in Venezuela but we keep reaching new levels.

Back to Hugo Carvajal: he finished his military studies in 1981.

In February 1992 he took part in the bloody coup led by Hugo Chávez. Carvajal was called "the other Hugo" and he was in the same prison with the caudillo until president Rafael Caldera set them free in 1994.

He worked for the Venezuelan Military Intelligence (DIM) from 2002 and he became its head in 2004. In April 2002 he was in Russia for training when the coup against Chávez took place and he came right away from Moscow. He arrived in Caracas and, handling a machine gun, asked everyone he met in the state buildings who was against Chávez. He was one of the first who got into the Miraflores building. He became colonel and vice-head of the Military Intelligence. 2 years later, in 2004, he became the head of the institution. He remained there until 2011.

Carvajal was in charge with negotiating the liberation of Richard Boulton, who was kidnapped by the FARC.

In 2008 United States accused him of cooperating with the FARC. Chávez defended him.

In 2012 opposition deputy Ismael García wrote on his Twitter account someone told him Carvajal and a judge had left the country. This was false but: is there something about this?

24 April 2013 Maduro named him head of Military Counterintelligence, which is the new DIM. If you visit the site of that organisation you will see they don't even update the dates (2012 is the latest).

In 2014, when Maduro decided to send Carvajal to Aruba, he named general Iván Rafael Hernández Dala (born in 1966) the new head of the Military Counterintelligence. Hernández Dala had been colonel until mid 2013.

What game is being played here? What can Ismael García tell us now? Why did Maduro think it was a wise move to propose Carjaval as consul to Aruba? Or did he just sign something proposed by someone else? Who was that?