Colombia extradites paramilitary leader to U.S.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia extradited one of the country's most feared paramilitary warlords to the United States early Wednesday to face drug-trafficking charges, the government said.

Carlos Mario Jimenez was flown to Washington via Miami, Florida, on a Drug Enforcement Administration plane, according to President Alvaro Uribe's office. The announcement came hours after Colombia's top judicial panel overturned a Supreme Court decision that had blocked the extradition temporarily.

The Supreme Court had ruled last month that Jimenez should not leave the country until he has confessed to crimes he committed as the leader of illegal far-right militias and paid reparations to his victims.

On Tuesday, the judiciary's high council overturned that decision.

Last year, the Colombian government stripped Jimenez of benefits offered during peace negotiations -- including protection from extradition -- because it said he was continuing to traffic drugs and run paramilitary operations from prison.

Far-right paramilitaries are engaged in a peace process with the government that has seen more than 31,000 fighters lay down their weapons. Commanders must confess to crimes in exchange for reduced sentences.

The 42-year-old Jimenez, better known by his alias "Macaco," was among the least cooperative warlords, and in August became the first militia leader to lose his benefits under the peace deal.

He is the first to be extradited to the United States.

In February, the U.S. Treasury Department named Jimenez as a specially designated narcotics trafficker, freezing any of his assets in the United States and forbidding any American citizen from doing business with him. Along with drug-trafficking charges, the U.S. also accuses him of money laundering and financing terrorist groups.

Many victims of the private militias -- which killed thousands and stole millions of acres of land -- opposed Jimenez's extradition, arguing that his victims would never be compensated and that many of his partners in crime would escape prosecution.

Alirio Uribe, the lawyer representing the National Victims' Movement that had sought to halt the extradition, argued that Jimenez's absence would mean many victims' families would never find the bodies of disappeared loved ones.

But Judge Angelino Lizcano, speaking for the seven-judge panel Tuesday, said extradition does not mean the reparations cannot be obtained for Jimenez's victims. He said Colombian prosecutors can still travel to the United States and obtain that information from Jimenez there.

Before surrendering in December 2006, Jimenez was accused of ordering massacres and shipping tons of cocaine to the United States.

Prosecutors said Jimenez became involved in a new gang war in northern Colombia after surrendering under the peace deal.

Emerging drug barons are filling a void in the trafficking business created by the demobilization of about 50 paramilitary warlords.

Colombia's paramilitaries were organized and funded by wealthy landowners and drug traffickers in an effort to wrest control of the countryside from leftist insurgents.

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