Colombia's extradition of a suspected heroin-smuggler to the United States on Sunday has raised expectations that Washington will revive a long-standing attempt to put the country's undisputed cocaine kings, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, on trial in a US court.
Colombia banned the extradition of its citizens in 1991 after Pablo Escobar, the late head of the Medellin drug mob, waged a war of bombings, kidnappings and murders. But the parliament scrapped the ban in late 1997 under intense US pressure.
Mr Jaime Orlando Lara, accused of shipping heroin to the US, on Sunday became the first Colombian to be sent for trial in a US court since 1990.
He appeared in a Manhattan federal court on Monday and was ordered held without bail. His lawyer said Mr Lara would enter a plea of not guilty when he is arraigned today.
Up to 50 others are on a list of relatively low-profile drugsmugglers who could be extradited. But a former Colombian anti-drug crusader said on Monday he believed the US had its eyes on the big prize, Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, jailed heads of the notorious Cali drug mob.
"The United States has for some time been working [towards the extradition of the brothers]. . . They are the capo of capos, and achieving their extradition would raise the profile of the US justice system," said Gen Miguel Maza, former state security chief during Escobar's campaign of terror in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
"The US would present them as the people behind the major [drug] consignments," he said.
Colombia rejected a US extradition request for the Rodriguez brothers in mid-1996. A spokesman for the US embassy in Bogota said he was not aware of any current extradition request. At the time of their capture in 1995, the brothers were said to be responsible for 80 per cent of the world's cocaine supply. Under lenient Colombian laws both will probably serve terms of less than 10 years, according to judicial sources.
Under the new extradition law passed by parliament no trafficker convicted of crimes committed before December 1997 can be sent for trial to the US.
US authorities have, however, argued that the Rodriguez brothers still run their smuggling empire from behind bars.
Mr Fernando Jose Flores, an alleged Venezuelan trafficker arrested last year and likely to be extradited from Colombia this week, said he believed US authorities would force him to implicate the Rodriguez brothers in more recent crimes.
"With threats, psychological torture. . . I will sign whatever they put in front of me so that they get what they want, the extradition of the Rodriguezes," Mr Flores, nicknamed "Fat Man", said in an interview this week.