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Bolivia’s highest court on Wednesday approved the extradition of the country’s former top anti-narcotics official to the US to face charges of trafficking narcotics.
Maximiliano Dávila Pérez briefly served as Bolivia’s top counter-narcotics official in 2019, before then president Evo Morales resigned. He later served as a police commander in Bolivia under the government of the current president, Luis Arce.
In January 2022, Dávila was arrested in Bolivia, and a month later the US justice department unsealed charges in a Manhattan federal court accusing him of conspiring to import cocaine from Bolivia and Peru into the US, and of using weapons related to the alleged drug trafficking.
The US state department offered a reward of up to $5m for his capture, accusing him of using his position to protect planes that transported cocaine. He was arrested by Bolivian officials that year.
In 2019, Dávila was the head of the Bolivian special forces for the fight against drug trafficking, the country’s equivalent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, under then president Morales. After Morales resigned, a rightwing president took power and ousted Dávila.
When Arce – who had been aligned with Morales – then took the presidency in 2020, Dávila came back to work in the government, serving as a police commander overseeing a region where coca – the precursor to cocaine – is grown. That year, press reports said Dávila was at an airport in northern Bolivia at the same time as the departure of a plane carrying cocaine, which was later intercepted by Mexican authorities.
Dávila faces additional “illicit enrichment” charges in Bolivia and for allegedly having “certain links” to drug trafficking, Bolivia’s interior minister said. He was arrested in 2022 as he attempted to flee to Argentina.
Earlier this year, Morales and Arce became bitter political foes. Even though Dávila worked under both presidents, Arce supporters are using Wednesday’s ruling on extraditing Dávila to accuse Morales of wrongdoing. Morales is seeking to run for president next year.
In 2008, Morales kicked out the US ambassador and the DEA from Bolivia, limiting the US government’s drug war operations. In turn, the Bush administration also expelled the Bolivian ambassador. The US and Bolivia still have an extradition treaty, however, which was signed in 1995.
It is unclear when Dávila will be extradited. His lawyers, cited by the Associated Press, said the high court’s decision is a “serious violation of human rights”.
