MIAMI – A nephew of the first Venezuelan appealed to the United States Supreme Court for an 18-year sentence for conspiring to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.
Francisco Flores and his cousin, Efraín Campo, were convicted in 2016 in a high-risk case that critically examines drug trafficking rates in the United States in the ranks of President Maduro’s socialist administration. In March, prosecutors accused Maduro himself of leading an alleged “narco-terrorist plot that inundated the United States with 250 tons of cocaine a year.
In a petition released Tuesday about the role of the Supreme Court, Flores’ lawyers argued that the jury was deceived when a federal ruling in Manhattan told them that the men knew that cocaine was destined for the United States, a conviction requirement. under U. S. law.
According to the request, at no time can the two men be heard in telephone recordings even inquiries into the final destination of the shipment to Honduras who were negotiating with informants running under the supervision of the U. S. Drug Administration. When informants inserted general references to drug trafficking in the United States in thirteen recorded cases, the men were silent or responded with inaudible responses, as requested.
“The only evidence cited regarding the alleged planned evasion of Flores’ wisdom was that he and Campo were silent, i. e. they sought no confirmation or explanation, when the DEA informants withdrew their various indirect allusions,” according to the request. who was ready through New York-based lawyers with Sidley.
Campo y Flores were arrested in Haiti in a 2015 DEA attack and sent to New York without delay for trial. They were lured to the Caribbean island with the promise of an $11 million advance from a wheelchair smuggler they met in Honduras called “The Sitting One” – the one who was sitting – who unknowingly a DEA informant.
An assembly followed in Caracas, in which a pattern of narcotics occurred, but no drugs were seized when they were arrested at a restaurant near Port-au-Prince airport, shortly after their arrival on a personal jet from Caracas.
Campo and Flores’ lawyers argued in their two-week trial that no drugs were exchanged in their hands and that the men never intended to deliver them. The prosecutors’ star witness, José Santos-Peña, a DEA informant who then lied to his e-stars.
We don’t know who pays Flores’ legal fees. Austin’s lawyer, Michael Levy, declined to comment. But at the court’s trial of the decline, his bill was overdue through Wilmer Ruperti, a wealthy Venezuelan shipping person close to Maduro’s government.
Flores, whom Maduro calls the “first fighter”, is one of the top hard members of Venezuela’s revolutionary government and has a constant presence with her husband, he seems in public. The two did not mention to the fullest the conviction of their enjoyments in the United States.
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