Colombia offers to extradite paramilitary boss for breaking peace pledge (to U.S.)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Colombia offers to extradite paramilitary boss for breaking peace pledge

2007-08-24 19:19:53 -

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A powerful paramilitary boss faces a long prison sentence _ and possible extradition to the United States _ because he broke a partial amnesty deal by continuing to run a smuggling ring from jail, authorities said Friday.

Carlos Jimenez is the first jailed warlord to lose benefits conceded under a 2003 peace accord that led paramilitary leaders to surrender and demobilize 31,000 of their men in exchange for reduced prison terms and protection from extradition.

Interior Minister Carlos Holguin said that Jimenez had continued to oversee a drug-smuggling operation from jail.
Col. Cesar Pinzon, head of the judicial police, said that Jimenez had emerged as one of the «most powerful men» in the Norte del Valle cartel, Colombia's largest cocaine smuggling organization, before he surrendered in December 2006 together with his fighters from the Central Bolivar Bloc, a paramilitary militia.

The peace accord was meant to disband the paramilitaries. Created by wealthy ranchers to combat Colombia's rebel armies, they evolved into drug-trafficking mafias that committed some of the worst atrocities in the country's half-century civil conflict.



Read more: http://www.pr-inside.com/colombia-offers-to-extradite-paramilitary-boss-r207948.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. He was discussed earlier in the Washington Post:

Paramilitary Ties Implicate Colombia's Political Elite

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; Page A01

~snip~
A defector from one group, in the southern state of Meta, said in an interview that earlier this year he was recruited by a new paramilitary group run by Carlos Jimenez. The defector, Arley Rincón Herrera, 26, said the new group's purpose was to protect shipments of cocaine, cash and chemicals used to make drugs.

"They didn't teach us anything political, since it was narco-trafficking that they were interested in," said Rincón, who is in hiding in Bogota. "We had to guard the merchandise. If a car came down with merchandise, we protected it."

Meta's paramilitary forces demobilized under government auspices. But far from being freed of fighters, the state is afflicted by new groups that are snatching farms and killing rivals.

A local cattleman who spoke on condition of anonymity said these fighters demand the sale of farms at bargain-basement prices and that people who resist are killed.

Ranchers used to be able to appease the paramilitary forces by giving them support.

But those days appear to be over, the cattleman said. "We all see now that the medicine was worse than the illness."
(snip/)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801374.html