Colombia extradites notorious drug boss to US
AFP July 10, 2013, 12:41 am
BOGOTA (AFP) - The last of the major Colombian drug lords -- Daniel "El Loco" Barrera -- was extradited to the United States Tuesday, where there had been a $5 million reward for his capture, Colombian police said.
Barrera, who was captured in Venezuela last year and deported to Colombia, was turned over to US Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Bogota and put on a plane to New York.
"This is the end of the last big capo of the 1980s," General Jose Roberto Leon, the head of the Colombia police, said as he turned over Barrera to the US agents at an air base in Bogota.
Leon was referring to an era when Colombia was under the sway of powerful and violent drug lords like the Medellin cartel's notorious Pablo Escobar.
Barrera, 43, was shown to reporters in handcuffs and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
He then boarded a DEA aircraft for the flight to New York, via the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He is wanted by authorities in New York and Florida for allegedly smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States between 1992 and 2012, in partnership with leftist FARC guerrillas.
Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine, having made 345 tons of the drug in 2011, according to UN estimates.
