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 News from Around the Americas | September 2007 
Colombia Grabs Alleged Cocaine Kingpin
 Toby Muse - Associated Press
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| | Soldiers escort Colombian drug lord Diego Montoya, left, at a military base in Bogota, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007. America's most-wanted drug trafficker Diego Montoya was captured in western Colombia. (AP/Fernando Vergara) |
Bogota, Colombia - Soldiers swarmed onto a farm Monday and captured one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers hiding in bushes in his underwear. Colombian officials called it their biggest drug war victory since the 1993 slaying of Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar.
Diego Montoya, who sits with Osama bin Laden on the FBI's 10 most-wanted list and has a $5 million bounty on his head, allegedly leads the Norte del Valle cartel. It is deemed Colombia's most dangerous drug gang and is accused of shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine to the U.S.
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told a news conference at Bogota's airport that Montoya was responsible for 1,500 killings in his career.
"Drug traffickers take note: This is the future that awaits you," Santos said before Montoya limped out of an air force plane wearing plastic handcuffs and escorted by five commandos.
Montoya put up no resistance when the army finally cornered him in the cartel's stronghold of Valle del Cauca state on the Pacific Coast, officials said. He is to be questioned before being extradited to the U.S., a process that Santos said would take at least two months.
After months of planning, elite commandos raided the small farm before dawn Monday and nabbed Montoya along with an uncle and three other cartel members, authorities said.
The government has been closing in on the cartel since last year, when soldiers killed eight members of a private militia believed to be protecting Montoya. But a wide network of cartel informants had frustrated the search for the alleged drug boss himself. Local media have recently carried stories on the cartel's alleged infiltration of Colombia's army and navy.
Better known as "Don Diego," Montoya is said to be in a bitter turf war with his cartel's other leader, Wilber Varela, who goes by the nickname "Jabon," or "Soap," and is reported to be living in Venezuela. Hundreds have died in fighting between their rival armed bands along Colombia's Pacific coast.
A U.S. indictment unsealed in 2004 against Montoya and Varela said that over the previous 14 years, their cartel had exported more than 1.2 million pounds - 600 tons - of cocaine worth more than $10 billion from Colombia to Mexico and ultimately to the United States for resale.
Colombia's government has made major gains against the cartel this year.
Montoya's brother, Eugenio Montoya, was captured in January. Former cartel leader Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante, known as "Rasguno" or "Scratchy," was extradited to the U.S. in July after pledging to cooperate with U.S. authorities. The gang's alleged money-laundering chief, Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, known as "Chupeta" or "Lollipop," was arrested last month in Brazil.
Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the cocaine entering the United States. Supply has remained robust despite record extraditions to the U.S. and eradication of coca crops. And despite Montoya's capture, recent history indicates it probably won't take long for someone to take his place.
The Norte del Valle cartel rose in the mid-1990s from the ashes of the once dominant Medellin and Cali gangs, paying for drugs and protection from both far-right paramilitaries and leftist rebels. The latter two forces have squeezed the drug gangs out of much of Colombia's countryside and finance their armed struggle by selling drugs to the new criminal groups.
The United States is funneling more than $700 million a year to Colombia in anti-narcotics and military aid.
Since taking office in 2002, President Alvaro Uribe, a key U.S. ally in Latin America, has approved the extradition of more than 540 Colombians to the United States, the majority on drug-trafficking charges.
Most of those extradited are thought to be low or midlevel drug traffickers. High-profile extraditions included Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, brothers who helped found the Cali cartel.
Montoya's group appeared to learn from the successes and failures of the earlier cartels.
Escobar and the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers seemed to relish the limelight that eventually brought them down. The newer generation of traffickers sought a lower profile, and they wielded unrestrained violence at the slightest provocation.
Victor Patino, one high-ranking Norte del Valle cartel member who decided to testify in the U.S., saw at least 35 family members and friends slaughtered in retaliation for his betrayal.
Associated Press writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report from Washington. |
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