Colombia has extradited to the United States a former lieutenant of drug lord Pablo Escobar who is accused of helping smuggle cocaine worth $1 billion a month to the United States and Europe, a top Colombian official said.
Fabio Ochoa is the highest-profile Colombian sent to stand trial in the United States since the South American nation, which is the world's largest cocaine producer, lifted a constitutional ban against extradition in 1997.
Ochoa was driven under tight security to Bogota's police airport and placed aboard a US plane at around 9.30 p.m. (3.30 p.m. Irish time), Gen. Gustavo Socha, the head of Colombia's anti-drug police, said.
"Fabio Ochoa has been extradited. He is on his way to the United States," Gen. Socha said.
Ochoa, 44, a former member of the defunct Medellin drug cartel run by Escobar, was captured in October 1999 in a joint operation carried out by the Colombian police and the US Drug Enforcement Administration dubbed Operation Millennium.
Agents said Ochoa was part of a ring exporting 30 tonnes of cocaine a month to the United States and Europe, with a street value of $1 billion. He was indicted in September 1999 by a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, federal grand jury.
Ochoa admits his involvement with Escobar's Medellin cartel for which he was jailed for 5 1/2 years until 1996. But he says he is not guilty in the latest case and that his extradition is a violation of a 1990 law that allowed traffickers to turn themselves in and avoid extradition to the United States.
Drug lords face stiffer sentences in the United States and confinement that is much more strictly controlled than in Colombia's anarchic prisons.