Drug Trafficking Colombia

Police fatally shot the chief of the Medellin cocaine cartel's terrorist squads Wednesday, crushing one of the last, most formidable shields protecting Pablo Escobar, the drug ring's fugitive leader. Brance Munoz Mosquera--who was 33 and was nicknamed Tyson because of his resemblance to American boxer Mike Tyson--was Escobar's closest associate still at large.

President Bush made a brief stop Monday in this war-ravaged nation to pledge continued U.S. aid to curb drug trafficking, but he could not escape to his Texas ranch for Thanksgiving without hearing an increasingly common question: How can you promise more spending when the U.S. budget deficit is rising so fast? This time, the query came from a Colombian journalist.

Some of the Medellin cartel's most notorious and ruthless cocaine bandits have fallen in battle. Its top trafficker, Pablo Escobar, is a man on the run, reportedly no longer managing his billion-dollar business. American and Colombian officials say this country's cocaine production is down by about one-fourth from mid-1989. Drug hauls by Colombian security forces so far this year exceed the record total for 1989. And a new president is vowing to battle violent drug lords "without concession."

The Bush administration has asked Congress to allow the Colombian government to use past anti-drug contributions of helicopters, planes, gunboats and other equipment in its expanding campaign against guerrilla groups, officials said Friday. The administration had signaled that it would ask Congress to allow new aid to be used for "counter-terrorism" activities as well as for the anti-drug effort.

Police shot and killed a key member of the violent Medellin cocaine cartel Saturday in a gun battle in one of Medellin's exclusive neighborhoods, police said. Gustavo de Jesus Gaviria, the cousin of the cartel's leader, Pablo Escobar, was killed in a battle with a police unit that was raiding one of the organization's luxury apartments in the Alaneda neighborhood in southern Medellin, according to a police statement.

Two men convicted of playing key roles in an international ring that linked Colombian drug lords to Los Angeles street gangs were sentenced Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole. U.S. District Judge William J. Rea imposed the sentences in Los Angeles on Brian (Waterhead Bo) Bennett, 25, a native of South-Central Los Angeles, and Colombia-born Mario Ernesto Villabona-Alvarado, 29, a reputed high-ranking member of the Cali, Colombia, cocaine cartel.

Four leaders of Colombia's major cocaine cartel and an associate of Bahamas Prime Minister Lynden Pindling have been charged by a federal grand jury with cocaine smuggling and conducting a 15-year conspiracy that involved the assassination of a top Colombian official and the murder of a drug informant in Baton Rouge, La. The indictment, unsealed Wednesday in Jacksonville, Fla.

Gunmen shot and killed Rafael Cardona Salazar, a high-ranking member of a Colombian cartel that furnishes as much as 80% of the cocaine shipped to the United States, police said. Cardona Salazar, 35, had been the subject of an extradition request by the U.S. Justice Department, but the warrant for his arrest was voided when the Colombian Supreme Court suspended the 1979 extradition treaty between Colombia and the United States.

The perennial violence of Colombia has taken some deadly new twists this year. Colombian drug-trafficking gangs, long known for their lethal treatment of outside enemies, now appear to be embroiled in a bloody vendetta among themselves. Colombian leftist guerrillas, at war for decades with the government and its security forces, recently turned heavy fire on rural townspeople.

The Congress here left President Ernesto Samper with half a loaf Friday by effectively shelving half of a tough anti-drug package. Legislators closed the current session without voting on a bill that would have doubled prison sentences for narcotics traffickers. Under intense pressure from Samper, they had passed a compromise version of a law to make it easier to confiscate drug traffickers' property. But the sentencing bill cannot be considered again until Congress reconvenes in March.

Police here handed over Fabio Ochoa to U.S. authorities Friday night, concluding the most prominent extradition of an alleged Colombian drug lord since the late 1980s, the head of Colombia's anti-narcotics police said. Speaking moments after the extradition, Gen. Gustavo Socha said Colombian police transferred Ochoa to U.S. custody at a heavily guarded hangar next to Bogota's El Dorado International Airport shortly after 9 p.m.

In a joint U.S.-Colombian operation, police found $35 million stashed in the walls of two Bogota apartments--one of the largest seizures of drug money ever, officials said Saturday. The commander of the Colombian national police, Gen. Ernesto Gilibert, said Saturday that the apartments where the money was found were used as "private banks" by the North Valley Cartel, a major cocaine ring. The money was found Friday packed in more than 300 plastic-wrapped bundles of $100,000 each.

Colombia's Supreme Court approved a U.S. request to extradite Fabio Ochoa, a former leader of the defunct Medellin cocaine cartel. Ochoa, who was a close associate of the late Medellin boss Pablo Escobar, was one of 31 people arrested in Bogota, the capital, in an October 1999 crackdown against alleged members of a new cocaine- smuggling operation. If President Andres Pastrana signs the extradition papers, as expected, Ochoa will be flown to the U.S.

The State Department has directed its largest private contractor in Colombia to hire foreign pilots to fight the drug war, an order that helps get around Congress' attempt to keep the U.S. from slipping further into this country's messy civil war. Last year, Congress limited to 300 the number of civilian contract workers participating in U.S.-financed drug-eradication efforts in Colombia. But in a little-noticed decision, the State Department only counts U.S. citizens toward that limit.

A Colombian court ordered a suspension of aerial eradication of drug crops using the chemical glyphosate, the main prong of a U.S.-backed anti-drug offensive in the nation. The ruling by a Bogota district court came in response to a petition by an organization representing Colombia's native Indian communities. There were conflicting reports on the scope of the ruling. Local media reported that it applied only to indigenous reserves in southern areas.

The Mexican government announced Wednesday the capture of one of the country's most wanted fugitives, Alcides Ramon Magana, a major step in President Vicente Fox's crackdown on drug trafficking and corruption. Hours after Magana's arrest, an indictment against him was unsealed in U.S. federal court in the Southern District of New York, the same venue where U.S. charges against former Gov. Mario Villanueva of Quintana Roo state in southern Mexico were made public last month. The U.S.

Drugdom's most wanted man, Pablo Escobar, is said to be finally planning to surrender after hiding for seven years, masterminding a deadly terrorist campaign and kidnaping some of Colombia's leading citizens. Anyone searching for an explanation for the sudden change of heart by the leader of Colombia's notorious Medellin cocaine cartel may find it among the extreme rightist groups that were formerly his allies here in the sun-scorched central Magdalena Valley.

The crowded courtroom fell silent. * A white-haired judge, straight out of central casting, peered down thoughtfully from his lofty perch. The man before him was short and stood very erect, no expression on that famous pockmarked face. He wore a khaki uniform with four stars on each shoulder and spoke Spanish in urgent, even tones. * "When I was brought to the United States, I mistakenly believed that I would be able to receive a fair trial," Manuel Noriega began.

After surviving months of grueling training by U.S. Green Berets, about 700 Colombian soldiers graduated Thursday to join one of the most successful crusades against cocaine cultivation in history. Since December, when the intensive fumigation supported by U.S.-backed Plan Colombia began, nearly a quarter of this country's known coca crops has been wiped out. More than 200 drug labs have been destroyed. And the military and police have suffered only a handful of casualties.

American anti-drug workers braved rebel gunfire to help rescue the crew of a downed Colombian police helicopter during an anti-drug mission, police and a U.S. official said Wednesday. The rescue Sunday illustrated the role American civilians hired by the government are playing in the drug war in this Latin American country--and the risks they face. The rescue team, U.S.