Pubdate: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 Source: Reuters Copyright: 2000 Reuters Limited. Author: Karl Penhaul POLICE SMASH POWERFUL COLOMBIA HEROIN 'MAFIA' BOGOTA (Reuters) - Anti-drug police smashed Colombia's ''most powerful'' heroin mob on Wednesday, seizing the alleged ringleader, a cousin of former drug capo Pablo Escobar, and 45 others accused of smuggling more than $9 million of heroin to the United States and Europe each month. The gang purportedly shipped up to 110 pounds (50 kg) of heroin a month, hidden inside rubber penis-shaped sex aids, women's bras and false-bottomed suitcases, police said. Officials had initially estimated the quantity of drugs smuggled at 220 pounds (100 kg) but later revised that figure. Almost 1,600 agents, drawing on U.S. intelligence information and backed by a fleet of planes and helicopter gunships, launched pre-dawn raids in four cities and a handful of towns in what was dubbed ``Operation Millennium II''. The arrests coincided with a visit to Washington by President Andres Pastrana, who is urgently lobbying for a $1.3 billion U.S. package of mostly military aid to fight the drug war and Marxist rebels that is currently bogged down in the U.S. Senate. ``The Colombian police has delivered a fresh blow to the mafias of the drug trade and captured 46 members of one of the most powerful heroin distribution and export networks,'' said National Police chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, who led the operation. A number of weapons, vehicles and communications equipment was confiscated during the raids, he added. Serrano said the cartel shipped drugs to the United States, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. Its leader was allegedly Nicolas Urquijo, cousin of Pablo Escobar, the kingpin of the notorious Medellin drug mob who died in a rooftop shoot-out with police in 1993. World's Largest Drug Producer Images broadcast on Colombian television showed Urquijo, dressed in jeans and an olive-green T-shirt, being bundled aboard a police airplane in the northwest city of Medellin early Wednesday. It was not immediately clear where he was being taken. Most of the arrests were made in the southwest city of Cali, Colombia's second largest city and powerbase of the now-defunct Cali drug mob, once blamed for supplying 80 percent of the world's cocaine. At a mid-morning news conference in Cali a group of the detainees, some in handcuffs, were paraded before television cameras under the guard of heavily-armed police officers. ``This is a job we have been doing and will continue. These mafiosos cannot hide,'' said Leo Areguin, chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Colombia, at the news conference. Colombia is the world's largest cocaine producer with an output of some 520 tons per year. It is also a leading supplier of heroin to the United States, with production of some six tons per year, according to the DEA. A kilo of Colombian heroin fetches around $185,000 wholesale in the United States and much more on the streets, according to DEA figures. Wednesday's sweep came exactly six months after the so-called ``Operation Millennium'' in which police arrested 31 people accused of shipping up to $1 billion of cocaine per month to the United States and Europe. Most of those are wanted in the United States and are likely to be extradited. It was not clear if any of those arrested Wednesday would face extradition to stand trial in U.S. courts. Pablo Escobar fought a bloody war of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations against the state throughout the 1980s in a successful bid to force the government to scrap its extradition treaties. Congress lifted the six-year ban on extradition in late 1997. Sentences for drug crimes are much more severe in the United States, with traffickers facing multiple life terms behind bars, whereas in Colombia major capos have walked free in less than 10 years.