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Walid Makled, known as 'the Turk', faces trial in Caracas after Hugo Chávez wins diplomatic tussle with Washington
An alleged drug lord who has implicated senior Venezuelan officials in cocaine-trafficking is bound for Caracas after President Hugo Chávez won a high-stakes extradition tussle with the United States.
Walid Makled, who is in a high-security jail in Colombia, is expected to be flown to Venezuela this week to be tried – and some say muzzled – for trafficking drugs through Venezuela's state-run ports.
Makled, known as "the Turk", told reporters from prison that for years he paid senior Venezuelan government figures and 40 military officers, including the head of the navy, to let him smuggle cocaine from the Venezuelan port of Puerto Cabello.
Colombia rebuffed US efforts to gain custody of Makled, 44, who promised to reveal all if tried there, and said he would instead be extradited to Venezuela, which asked first.
He is likely to be flown to Caracas this week once Venezuelan officials submit documentation guaranteeing his human rights, his lawyer, Miguel Ramirez, told El Nuevo Herald. "Once that has been presented, there is nothing more to be done."
The imminent extradition prompted laments in Washington at a lost opportunity to expose alleged corruption in Chávez's government.
Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, said the US could use the testimony to "dismantle some of the most important drug networks in the world today".
As a sop to his Washington ally, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia allowed US officials to question Makled in jail, but it remains unclear to what extent he co-operated given the Americans' lack of leverage. Experts doubted such testimony could be used in a US court.
Makled, a Venezuelan of Syrian descent, has turned into an unlikely catalyst for detente between Bogotá and Caracas, neighbours with a stormy relationship.
Chávez has granted important economic and political concessions in what many have linked to the government's desire to get Makled on Venezuela's side of the Andes.
Chávez has infuriated his radical leftwing base by extraditing an alleged member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) to Colombia, a reversal from when he used to affirm solidarity with the leftist rebel group and castigate Bogota as a US poodle.
Activists who normally count themselves as fervent "Chavistas" cried betrayal, burned ministers' effigies and said the Farc suspect, Joaquin Pérez Becerra, who ran a website from Sweden sympathetic to the guerrillas, had been sacrificed so Caracas could get Makled.
"This is terrible and dangerous for the whole international revolutionary movement," said one protester.
Aporrea.org, a leftist Venezuelan website, evoked Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate. "It's a swap for Makled."
In a combative speech on Saturday night, Chávez said Venezuela had complied with an Interpol "red alert" to detain Pérez and took responsibility for the decision to deport him.
"Don't burn effigies of my ministers," he said. "I am the one in charge. Burn me."
He accused the ultra-left of having been infiltrated by the CIA.
Pérez's name did not appear on Interpol's "red notice" web page. Interpol did not immediately respond to a query seeking to clarify his status.
Sweden demanded an explanation for why it was not notified that Pérez, who holds Swedish citizenship, was to be extradited. He flew from Sweden, via Germany, to Caracas. Santos phoned Chávez requesting his detention before the plane landed.
There will be even heavier security awaiting Makled when he lands in Caracas. He rose to prominence in Venezuela for having an airline and contract at Puerto Cabello and became infamous when authorities seized cocaine at his ranch and accused him of links to two murders.
As a fugitive, he was named by Barack Obama in 2009 as among "significant foreign narcotics traffickers". Colombian authorities caught him on the border with Venezuela last August.
Chávez said Washington wanted to use the alleged drug lord to smear Venezuela's socialist revolution.
"The empire's game here is to offer who knows how many opportunities to this man, including protection, so that he may begin to vomit out all he wants against Venezuela and its president."
Chávez lobbied for Makled's extradition soon after his arrest, saying he must face charges in Venezuela.
Santos agreed last November and Colombia's supreme court upheld the extradition in March.