Bolivia confirms that the US requested the extradition of a detained former anti-drug chief

The Bolivian Foreign Ministry confirmed this Wednesday that it received from the United States a request for the arrest “for extradition purposes” of the former Bolivian anti-narcotics chief Maximilian Davilaconfined for a few days in a prison in La Paz for alleged links with drug traffickers.

“We have received a request from the United States (…) for preventive detention for the purpose of extradition of the Bolivian citizen Maximiliano Dávila Pérez,” Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta said at a press conference.

The request came through the US Embassy in La Paz and is part of the extradition treaty signed by both countries, he said.

Mayta explained that the Foreign Ministry is responsible for reviewing compliance with formal requirements in these applications, but the entity that defines whether or not they proceed is the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ).

After the review, the ministry can return the document if there are observations or send it to the TSJ if the requirements were met, for which there is no established term in the extradition treaty, he specified.

“We are just at the beginning of this request, the procedure is here in the Foreign Ministry, our legal department and the specialized units are carrying out the work and eventually, depending on whether they verify compliance with the requirements, the decision will be made either to send it to the TSJ or carry out Any comments,” he added.

A BACKGROUND

Mayta avoided commenting on the origin or not of the request, although he did recall a process that he was part of years ago before the United States as a lawyer for the victims of a social uprising in 2003 known as “black October.”

The military and police repression of those citizen protests left more than 60 dead and hundreds injured, also leading to the resignation of then President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.

Since then, Sánchez de Lozada and his defense minister, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, have lived in the United States.

Mayta recalled that the extradition of both former authorities was requested in 2008 and 2012 to prosecute them for crimes such as “bloody massacre” and “until today the United States has not ruled on this.”

“As an authority I cannot advance any criteria, nor get involved in a competition of other national authorities. What we are going to do is review “compliance with the requirements in “reasonable terms”, he indicated.

THE REWARD

The US Embassy has also informed the Bolivian government of the offer of a $5 million reward for information that could lead to the conviction of Dávila, whom the US considers involved in drug trafficking.

It is a communication “by diplomatic courtesy” and the offer “does not commit the Bolivian State” because it is governed by internal regulations of the United States, according to Mayta.

Dávila, the former national director of the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking (FELCN) in the last government of former Bolivian President Evo Morales, was arrested in January in southern Bolivia near the border with Argentina.

The former police chief is preventively imprisoned in La Paz accused of the alleged crime of legitimization of illicit profits.

The US State Department pointed out on this day that Dávila “used his position to protect aircraft used to transport cocaine through third countries for distribution in the US.”

Last week, Bolivian authorities accused the former police chief of “protecting” a network of drug traffickers who were arrested in Peru and Colombia and who are being investigated by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).