Bolivia extradites former anti-drug chief accused of drug trafficking to the US

Former Bolivian anti-drug chief Maximiliano Dávila was extradited to the United States on Thursday to face a drug trafficking trial in a New York court.

“A plane has arrived with all the logistics to extradite Maximiliano Dávila… we have handed it over to the prisoner,” reported the director of the Penitentiary Regime, Juan Carlos Pinturas, outside the prison where Dávila was being held. since January of last year.

“Now it is in the hands of the United States,” he added.

Dávila, 59, was director of the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking (FELCN) during the government of Evo Morales (2006-2019).

In 2022, the United States Department of State announced a reward of up to five million dollars for anyone who provided information that would help bring Dávila to justice, who has repeatedly denied the accusations against him. Dávila was arrested shortly after in Bolivia.

According to US justice, Dávila used his position as director of the FELCN to allegedly protect planes used to transport cocaine to the United States. He also claimed that he was involved in money laundering and drug trafficking before and during his leadership of the organization.

At the end of November, the Supreme Court of Justice of Bolivia approved his immediate extradition to the United States.

Dávila has denied his links to drug trafficking in a letter and his defense denounced that his rights have been violated.

In the last decade, at least five former anti-drug police chiefs have been denounced and investigated for protecting drug traffickers, although there have been no sentences in Bolivia.

The Andean country has not had a United States ambassador since 2008 when the Morales government expelled that country’s diplomatic chief. In response, the US government did the same with the Bolivian ambassador.

In 1995, Colonel Faustino Rico Toro was extradited from Bolivia to be tried for cocaine trafficking in the United States. Rico Toro had been appointed head of the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking in February 1991 by then-president Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993).

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