Stealing Colombia's Criminals

On May 13, 2008, Diego Fernando Murillo, aka "Don Berna," the notorious Colombian warlord and heir to famed drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, walked off a plane in suburban New York, his hands cuffed behind him. Thirteen other high-profile leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a heavily armed, well-financed paramilitary group on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, also arrived via Drug Enforcement Administration planes across the United States that same day to face criminal charges in U.S. courts for narcotrafficking. The mass extradition was hailed by U.S. and Colombian officials as a victory for justice and a model of hemispheric cooperation.

In reality, it was a travesty -- the accused were only charged with crimes related to cocaine smuggling into the United States and walked away from indictments on hundreds of murders, kidnappings, and other atrocities back home in Colombia. It set a troubling precedent for a government that would rather export its problems than deal with them. Worse, as the United States poached these top criminals, it deprived Colombia's legal system of the chance to prosecute local crimes, robbed victims of the possibility for any resolution, sacrificed vital evidence that could be used in stopping further offenses, and might have pushed the country further away from building a lasting peace with its violent and virulent armed groups.

Since President Álvaro Uribe came to power in 2002, nearly 1,200 Colombian nationals -- including top drug lords and cartel operators from the country's simmering rebel insurgency -- have been extradited to the United States to stand trial. Of the nearly 57,000 foreign-born prisoners in U.S. jails today, Colombian citizens make up the second-largest national group (with Mexicans the largest). But though extradition was once widely supported as a means of bypassing Colombia's massive legislative and judicial corruption, today it is so controversial that it has become the subject of a standoff between the presidency and the Supreme Court.

The extradition binge was born of the chaos of Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, when cartels held the state hostage to their terror campaign. Their power extended throughout the country: Drug gangs established alliances with leftist insurgents, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and as time went on, also permeated their rivals -- a network of right-wing paramilitaries that morphed from community protectorates into brutal occupiers that trafficked cocaine and kidnapped citizens. The cartels also dug deep into the Colombian political class and found high-level allies, to the extent that they were able to successfully change the Colombian Constitution in 1991 to prohibit the extradition of Colombian citizens. After years of the worst kidnappings and assassinations the region had ever seen -- as well as a boom in the cocaine trade to the United States -- pressure from Washington at last persuaded the country to allow extraditions in late 1997, and the worst drug kingpins were sent abroad.

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PORLAPIEDRA

11:04 AM ET

June 20, 2010

Terrible article

There is one thing that Colombian criminals fear, and that is extradition. The Colombian justice system is so corrupt that big drug lords guilty of every possible atrocity are easily released because drug money goes a very long way. Pablo Escobar was incarcerated in a prison that he built himself, more like a mansion than an actual prison. When he got bored of being in jail, he just got up and left. And when he was threatened by extradition, he unleashed an unprecedented terrorist war against the Colombian government, setting of bombs in shopping centers, killing hundreds of innocent people. The Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, leaders of the Cali Cartel, were ordered to be released by a bribed judge and the government was forced into all sorts of maneuvers to avoid these criminals from being released. More recently, on June 19, 2010, alias Pantera, the leader of a group of assassins responsible for massacres and huge atrocities, was set free by a judge because he was not captured with the appropriate formalities. (!!!!!!!)

Of course the judicial branch is against extradition. It is a monument to its incompetence and corruption, and it deprives judges of very substantial bribes that they are used to. The only people who could judge the higher courts were in congress and they were all part of that "parapolitica" purge and are today in prison because captured terrorists would testify against them in exchange for extravagant sentence reductions.

I don´t know where you heard that the Colombian legal system is competent and transparent, but from where I´m sitting (In Colombia) that is definitely not the impression. We need extradition. It is the only thing terrorists are afraid of. And saying that the peace process with FARC is delayed by extradition is an incredibly ignorant statement. If it is true that terrorists would avoid being tried for atrocities and face only drug charges in the US, then that should be a good thing for them. Your article is a contradiction in itself. Your sources are obviously politicized and biased, do your research.

DOñABARBARA

12:37 PM ET

June 21, 2010

totally agree!!! shameful article!!!

I totally agree with PorlaPiedra. This article is the pure manifestation of disinformation about the Colombian situation. The former paramilitaries such as Don Berna and Salvatore Mancuso who demobilized under the Justice and Peace Law were extradicted to the United States because they violated the conditions of the benefits they received from this transitional justice mechanism, which provided they would receive reduced prison sentences and would not be extradited if they fully abandoned their criminal activities. These criminals continued with their drug trafficking businesses from prison, reason for which all their benefits were removed and they were sent to the United States under the extradition agreement signed between the two countries, whose signature cost the lives of various valiant Colombians in the 80s such as former Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. To a Colombian criminal, being extradited to the US is the worse possible punishment, reason for which it was so arduously fought by kingpin Pablo Escobar. As to the impunity of crimes committed in Colombia, what the article states is totally false. The Colombian government has reached and signed an agreement with US authorities which allow the national judicial authorities to continue with the criminals' testimonies from the US to establish truth on crimes committed in the country, and as Minister of Interior Fabio Valencia Cossio has repeatedly stated, the criminals will face BOTH prison sentences after violating their Justice and Peace obligations: for drug trafficking in the US and for crimes against humanity in Colombia after having served their terms in the US. The author of this article should better research the situation in the country before making such damaging remarks about the Colombian government, which has done an outstanding job in improving the human rights situation in the country, reason for which President Alvaro Uribe's successor and former Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, acquired a landslide victory with more than 69% of the votes in yesterday's Presidential elections.

LEGEH

11:35 AM ET

June 22, 2010

Facts

1. The extradited paramilitaries have not been convicted for their human rights abuses. Extradition has stood in the way of that. The US is not charging them for those crimes, nor is it interested.
2. After four years of the justice and peace law, a single victim has yet to be repaired.
3. After four years of the justice and peace law, a single conviction has yet to be handed down --extradition of the paramilitary leaders has been a major factor standing in the way of disccovering the truth.
4. In spite of some advances in the security and human rights situation throughout Colombia, the State -inevitably- has been complicit in many abuses. This is nothing to be scandalized about, it is something that needs correction. Extradition of the paramilitary leaders has offered a way out for the government, which seeks to avoid transparency about the participation and complicity of agents of the Colombian State in massacres and human rights abuses. Uribe and other members of the government and Congress have also avoided embarassing discussions about their ties with the paramilitaries.

Extradition of the drug criminals? Yes. But only after the full extent of their responsibility for human rights abuses has been clarified. Until that is not the case, extraditions will stand in the way of peace and justice in Colombia. There is nothing ignorant about this article

2:40 PM ET

Facts are true, but the argument is still fallacious.

The reason why there have not been any convictions yet is precisely because the judicial branch in Colombia has been unable to handle the huge volume of legal procedures that arose from the peace process. Over 30.000 terrorists demobilized, over a thousand of those went into the justicia y paz program and have not been extradited. And they have not been convicted either. So extradition has not interfered with convictions, or with their telling the truth, because they are still speaking from the US about their collaborators and their business. So yes, they were extradited, and no, there have been no convictions, but that doesn´t mean that one caused the other.
Reparations have not been affected by extradition either. How come those that have not been extradited (over a thousand) have not repaired their victims?
And once again, they WILL stand trial in Colombia for their crimes against humanity, but they will serve their drug time in the States first, that is the deal. And it makes sense because it prevents them from committing crimes from prison they way they were before extradition, and when they come back they will have lost important contacts and their ability to continue trafficking.
And what I said was ignorant was saying that extradition is delaying the peace process with the FARC. There is no evidence supporting that, not even an argument in the article. The peace process with FARC went on for over three years and foundered for different reasons; extradition was not even mentioned during the process. The negotiations failed because FARC did not want to negotiate, period. Nothing to do with extradition. So yes, ignorant.
And the contradiction remains. If terrorists are, like the article says, avoiding paying for their crimes against humanity by being extradited, then that should sound like a good deal. And yet they fear extradition more than anything, the author even says that they considered it betrayal.

ADMINS

1:09 PM ET

is good for the customer

is good for the customer nation -- us states -- to decriminalize the drugs becoming smuggled throughout. A household bachelor's pad business will come up that will put the particular La drug lords beyond organization. With half that which you invest in the particular "war in drug treatments," we are able to give first-class rehab providers to be able to addicts who would like to stop.
James from acne scar removal

RSAFSOZ

1:58 PM ET

a trusting problem

i cant trust to colombia's criminals sikis reports.

Foreign Policy Magazine

How extradition is ruining Latin America's courts, robbing victims of justice, and undermining the drug war.

BY MICHAEL REED-HURTADO | JUNE 18, 2010

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