Pubdate: Wed, 25 Sep 2002
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2002 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Jerry Seper

DEA INDICTS 3 IN COCAINE SCHEME

The leaders of a right-wing paramilitary organization in Colombia were 
indicted yesterday on charges of conspiring to smuggle 17 tons of cocaine 
into the United States and Europe over the past five years. Top Stories

Attorney General John Ashcroft, at an afternoon press conference, said the 
government would seek the extradition of Carlos Castano, leader of the 
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials AUC, 
along with two of his top lieutenants, Salvatore Mancuso and Juan Carlos 
Sierra-Ramirez.

The AUC is a Colombian paramilitary group listed by the State Department as 
a terrorist organization.

"The indictment of these high-ranking AUC members marks, once again, the 
convergence of two of the top priorities of the Department of Justice: the 
prevention of terrorism and the reduction of illegal drug use," Mr. 
Ashcroft said.

"As today's indictment reminds us, the lawlessness that breeds terrorism is 
also a fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism," he 
said. "To surrender to either of these threats is to surrender to both."

Castano, in a letter delivered yesterday to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, 
Colombia, said he would step down as AUC leader and defend himself against 
the charges.

"I will make the necessary arrangements for my professional and family life 
and proceed with the formalities of voluntarily handing myself over to 
United States justice," he wrote. "I have never been involved in the wicked 
business of drug trafficking, and I have been its natural enemy."

No timetable for his surrender was announced, but an AUC spokesman told 
reporters Castano had told his troops farewell and was headed to the United 
States. Headquartered in the mountains of northwest Colombia, Castano and 
his two lieutenants face life in prison if convicted.

The five-count indictment, handed up in U.S. District Court in Washington, 
follows by six months an indictment of several members of the left-wing 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC and also listed by 
the State Department as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Ashcroft said the indictment showed the AUC leaders were not the 
anti-FARC freedom fighters they claimed to be, but "violent drug 
traffickers who poison our citizens and threaten our national security."

The AUC indictment is the culmination of a 30-month undercover 
investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, working in 
cooperation with the Justice Department, U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. 
Coast Guard.

DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, who attended the press conference, said 
it was the government's "expectation and intent" to see that Castano, 
Mancuso and Sierra-Ramirez were arrested and extradited to the United 
States, "as the law required."

"The drug trade operated by the leaders of the AUC provided the means to 
equip an army of paramilitary terrorists with the necessary weapons, cash 
and provisions," Mr. Hutchinson said.

"It is clear that the paramilitary organization led by Carlos Castano was 
immersed for years in the illegal drug trade, from the taxing of the coca 
growers to the processing laboratories to the transportation of cocaine to 
the targeted country," he said.

Mr. Hutchinson called the indictment "the first step along many steps in 
reducing the flow of cocaine coming into the United States."

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is visiting Washington this week. His 
interior minister, Fernando Londono, said yesterday that Colombia would 
immediately receive and analyze the formal extradition requests from the 
U.S. government.

The indictment said Castano directed cocaine production and distribution 
activities in AUC-controlled regions of Colombia, including protecting 
coca-processing laboratories, setting quality and price controls for 
cocaine, and arranging for and protecting cocaine shipments both within and 
outside of Colombia.

It said Castano, Mancuso and Sierra-Ramirez used violence, force and 
intimidation to maintain their authority over cocaine trafficking 
activities - including kidnapping, threats and the murder of another 
Colombian drug trafficker as retribution for failing to pay a drug debt.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens