Pubdate: Thu, 29 Sep 2005
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Hugh Bronstein
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COLOMBIA SUSPENDS RIGHT-WING WARLORD'S EXTRADITION

BOGOTA, Colombia - One of the bloodiest leaders of Colombia's 
right-wing paramilitaries conditionally won his battle to avoid 
extradition to the United States on Thursday when the government said 
he could stay in the country.

Diego Fernando Murillo, known as Don Berna, who oversaw a vast 
criminal network from his Medellin base in the 1990s, will not be 
sent north to face drug smuggling charges as long as he cooperates 
with Colombia's demobilization of illegal armed groups.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota said in a statement it was disappointed at 
the decision to suspend the extradition. It pointed out that Colombia 
had said extradition would not be negotiated in the demobilization.

Under the demobilization, Murillo is required to cooperate with 
investigators in an effort to provide reparations to those victimized 
by the paramilitaries over the past 20 years during which they 
terrorized the Andean country in the name of fighting left-wing 
rebels. More than 10,000 militia members have turned in their guns.

While the United States backs President Alvaro Uribe, elected in 2002 
on promises of smashing Colombia's Marxist insurgency, his peace plan 
threatens to put cases against major drug offenders like Murillo on 
the back burner.

"What happened today is further evidence that top drug lords are 
calling the shots in this so-called peace process with the 
government," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for New 
York-based Human Rights Watch.

"This is what the paramilitaries have wanted from the beginning, to 
avoid extradition. And that's what the criminal who succeeded Pablo 
Escobar in controlling Medellin got today," he added, referring to 
Colombia's most notorious cocaine king who was gunned down by 
authorities in 1993.

Critics of the demobilization say it offers soft treatment to those 
guilty of some of the worst atrocities of Colombia's decades-old 
guerrilla war. Those who massacred and beheaded peasants suspected of 
cooperating with the rebels face up to only eight years in prison.

Thousands are killed and tens of thousand are forced from their homes 
every year by Colombia's conflict, what the United Nations calls the 
world's worst ongoing humanitarian crisis outside Africa.
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