Velken Tezeri was a human male who worked as an arms dealer before deciding to stabilize his situation by becoming a guard for the Hutt crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure at his palace on the desert planet Tatooine. In 4 ABY, he was one of five guards chosen to ride on board a Bantha-II cargo skiff carrying the prisoners Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca to the Great Pit of Carkoon, where Jabba planned to execute the trio by feeding them to a sarlacc.
However, during the execution attempt, thanks to R2-D2, Skywalker managed to break free and attacked the guards on his skiff. Tezeri tried to help his comrades to defeat Skywalker, so he took out his gun from his pocket, but Skywalker passed his lightsaber very close to him, causing Tezeri to slip and fall through a skiff's rail. With such bad luck, Tezeri fell to the sand and rolled until falling into the mouth of the Sarlacc, to slowly be digested over thousands of years.
Velken Tezeri was played by stuntman Larry Holt in the 1983 original trilogy, film Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. In the current Star Wars canon, the character was first identified in the 2015 reference book Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know. The Battle of Hoth and the Second Death Star, an issue of De Agostini's Star Wars Encyclopedia series released on December 11, 2020, erroneously describes Tezeri as being on the second skiff rather than the one carrying the prisoners.
- Star Wars: Visions — "Tatooine Rhapsody"
- Ultimate Star Wars
- Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know
- Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, Updated and Expanded
- Star Wars Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles
- Star Wars: Complete Vehicles
- "The Consequence of Choice: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" — Star Wars Insider 191
- Ultimate Star Wars, New Edition
- Star Wars: Book of Lists
- Star Wars Complete Vehicles, New Edition