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Posted on 12/03/2004 9:52:48 PM PST by bd476
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2 hours, 24 minutes ago
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By Hugh Bronstein
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - "The former boss of the Cali drug cartel, who once controlled most of the world's cocaine trade, was sent to the United States on Friday to face trafficking and money laundering charges.
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Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 65, was one of the last of Colombia's legendary outlaws to run the cocaine business from jungle laboratories to foreign distribution. He is the highest-profile criminal ever extradited from this Andean country to the United States.
Authorities said Rodriguez Orejuela, known in the 1980s and early 1990s as the "Chess Player" for his ability to outwit police, continued to run his empire from jail after his 1995 arrest and after a ban on extraditions was lifted two years later.
But on Friday evening he was escorted, handcuffed and wearing a bullet-proof jacket, by heavily armed police to a Bogota police airport and handed to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officers.
He was put on a Miami-bound plane about two weeks after President Bush (news - web sites) visited Colombia to solidify his alliance with President Alvaro Uribe against "narcoterrorists."
Rodriguez Orejuela faces drug trafficking and money laundering charges in Miami, where he was indicted as part of Operation Cornerstone, a federal investigation that began in 1991 and resulted in the seizure of nearly 50,000 kilos of cocaine and $15 million in U.S. currency.
"Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela is alleged to have trafficked in illegal drugs that tear at the fabric of society and draw the innocent away from safe and productive lives," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) said in a written statement.
Rodriguez Orejuela faces life in prison. He was scheduled for his first appearance in a U.S. federal court on Monday.
'WATERSHED MOMENT'
"This is a watershed moment in our nation's war against drugs," said Marcos Daniel Jimenez, the U.S. Attorney in Miami whose office will prosecute Rodriguez Orejuela.
The arrest of Rodriguez Orejuela and his brother Miguel in 1995 was touted as a big victory in the war on drugs but had little effect on the market.
The gray-haired Rodriguez Orejuela, now a grandfatherly figure given to wearing Lacoste sweaters, is a relic of Colombia's hyper-violent 1980s and 1990s cocaine trade when public figures, including a top presidential candidate, were routinely murdered for threatening cocaine interests.
"This extradition is a sign of the maturation of Colombia's political system," said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at Washington think tank Inter-American Dialogue.
Uribe has increased extraditions during his more than two years in power. His tough security policies have reduced violence associated with the country's 40-year-old guerrilla war involving Marxist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, both of which are linked to the cocaine business.
Washington has poured more than $3 billion over the past four years into Plan Colombia, which funds the chemical defoliation of coca fields and other anti-drug measures. Bush pledges continued support.
Rodriguez Orejuela spent four months out of jail in late 2002 and early 2003 after a judge reduced his 15-year sentence for good behavior. Police soon picked him up on fresh charges of trafficking drugs to Florida in the early 1990s.
The drug king sounded resigned in a recent interview with a Colombian magazine, saying: "I have found a certain internal peace. My only worry is for my family. My destiny is in the hands of God."
His brother Miguel is in a Colombian jail. The brothers took near control of Colombia's cocaine industry after police gunned down rival drug lord Pablo Escobar in 1993." (Additional reporting by Jim Loney in Miami)
"He was put on a Miami-bound plane about two weeks after President Bush (news - web sites) visited Colombia to solidify his alliance with President Alvaro Uribe against "narcoterrorists."
Rodriguez Orejuela faces drug trafficking and money laundering charges in Miami, where he was indicted as part of Operation Cornerstone, a federal investigation that began in 1991 and resulted in the seizure of nearly 50,000 kilos of cocaine and $15 million in U.S. currency.
"Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela is alleged to have trafficked in illegal drugs that tear at the fabric of society and draw the innocent away from safe and productive lives," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) said in a written statement.
Our President's South American trip still reaping productive benefits Ping.
bump!
Ping.
This is largely symbolic though. As the article said, his arrest had little effect on the cocaine market. Cocaine is cheaper and more pure in the U.S. now than it's ever been since the drug became popular here in the seventies and eighties. This guy has already been replaced by other people. That's the way it goes all the way down to the street level addict dealers. The biggest effect on supply and prices is going to come from the massive seizures they sometimes make, not from increasing the number of people they put in prison. They've seized several dozen tons of cocaine headed for this country in the past couple of months. That's what they need to focus on more than anything on the supply side, interdicting the big loads. The demand side is the tougher egg to crack, and reducing demand is more important than reducing supply because demand tends to get met regardless of the efforts we make in reducing supply. That can only be done by continuing to educate young people on the dangers of drugs and making a much better effort to get addicts off of the drugs, especially those who come in contact with our criminal justice system (probably the majority eventually).
There are reports that he was still actively involved in the business while in Colombian prison.
I don't know whether he was still involved with it recently or not. Regardless, the fact that he is being brought up here for trial is not going to impede the flow of cocaine into this country. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to go after the people responsible for bringing drugs into this country. I'm just pointing out that nailing a guy like this doesn't really have any effect on the average coke user here in America. What does affect the average coke user on the street, are massive seizures of cocaine like the dozens of metric tons that have been seized over the past couple of months from just two or three vessels. This makes a difference because it may actually cause cocaine prices to go up or at hopefully put the breaks on some of the downward slide we've been seeing in cocaine prices lately. The most important thing we can do in attacking the supply side of the cocaine markets is to keep stopping the huge loads. This increases the costs involved in getting drugs to end consumers which should increase prices.
Cocaine prices need to increase. It's much cheaper for consumers than it was twenty years ago and purity has gone up. That means users can afford to do more of the drug and that increases the risk that they'll become addicted. Cheaper prices also make it easier for young people to afford the drug that was once too expensive for many kids to even try.
As always, the Dominicans retail, the Columbians wholsale.
Oh, that is interesting! Sounds kind of ominous, doesn't it.
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