(AP) - A small plane on a U.S. counterdrug mission crashed Saturday in a remote, jungle region of northern Colombia, killing three Americans and a Panamanian National Guardsman and seriously injuring the other two Americans aboard. The Havilland Dash 8 was flying over the western Caribbean when it lost radio contact with the U.S.-sponsored multinational task force in Key West, Florida that runs drug interdiction in region, the U.S. military said. Such planes typically track speedboats that smuggle cocaine from Colombia north into Central America and the Caribbean but U.S. Southern Command spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flanders said he did not have details on the mission. [continues 364 words]
4 KILLED IN PLANE CRASH 3 Americans Die, 2 Others Seriously Injured in Counter-Drug Flight BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A small plane on a U.S. counterdrug mission crashed Saturday in a remote region of northern Colombia, killing three Americans and a Panamanian National Guardsman and seriously injuring the other two Americans aboard. The Havilland Dash 8 was flying over the western Caribbean when it lost radio contact with the U.S.-sponsored multinational task force in Key West, Fla., that runs drug interdiction in the region, the U.S. military said. [continues 262 words]
HAVANA -- A retired U.S. Army general said Sunday he talked for 12 hours with Fidel Castro and encouraged the Cuban president to release 250 political prisoners in this island's jails in an effort to encourage dialogue with the United States. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, now a university professor visiting the island with the Center for Defense Information, told a news conference that Cuba did not present a military risk to the United States. "They represent zero threat to the United States," he said. [continues 402 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - Police put a man accused of heroin trafficking on a U.S. government plane to Florida yesterday, the first time in nearly a decade Colombia has turned over one of its nationals to stand trial in the United States. The hand-over of 30-year-old Jaime Orlando Lara to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration comes 10 days after a deadly terrorist bomb exploded in Bogota in what many suspected was a warning against extraditions. President Andres Pastrana defiantly signed Lara's extradition papers just hours after the explosion Nov. 11, which killed eight bystanders in an upscale shopping district. [continues 351 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- They are known as "faceless judges," magistrates who for nearly a decade have decided Colombia's most dangerous criminal cases, their names and faces deliberately kept from the public. Now, these jurists are losing their anonymity. Their extraordinary protection, granted under a 1991 decree after drug cartel hitmen assassinated scores of judges, expires June 30. And although Colombia's large drug gangs are now history, its faceless judges fear that many of the criminals they've convicted know or will soon learn their identities -- and some will be out for revenge. [continues 675 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - They are known as "faceless judges," magistrates who for nearly a decade have decided Colombia's most dangerous criminal cases, their names and faces deliberately kept from the public. Now, these jurists are losing their anonymity. Their extraordinary protection, granted under a 1991 decree after drug cartel hitmen assassinated scores of judges, expires June 30. And although Colombia's large drug gangs are now history, its faceless judges fear that many of the criminals they've convicted know or will soon learn their identities and some will be out for revenge. [continues 687 words]
