- BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters)
- A Colombian judge on Friday ordered the release from prison of the former
bosses of the notorious Cali cartel, but the government swiftly pledged
to block the ruling and accused the cocaine lords of using their "gigantic
power" to buy justice.
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- "I'm convinced these men with their gigantic economic
power are producing a judicial result not according to evidence,"
Justice and Interior Minister Fernando Londono said.
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- "We would be demonstrating once more that Colombia's
judicial system is incapable of dealing with drug-trafficking and that
the only solution we would have left is to extradite them (to the United
States), Londono said.
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- Colombia's Attorney General, Luis Camilo Osorio, said:
"We're going to try to block this ruling. We think it's impossible
it can be legal because they have not served their sentences."
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- In a surprise move, Judge Pedro Jose Suarez ordered the
release of brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, who were sentenced
to 17 years and 15 years in prison respectively after they were arrested
in 1995 during a nationwide manhunt by elite Colombian police and the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency.
-
- The Orejuela brothers took control of up to 80 percent
of the world's cocaine after the 1993 killing of former drug lord Pablo
Escobar, who led the rival Medellin drug cartel. The United States has
in the past sought their extradition.
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- President Alvaro Uribe, who insists that fighting the
drug trade is critical to ending the Andean nation's 38-year-old war, promised
to carry out an investigation.
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- "I am going to immediately summon the attorney general
and the minister of justice because this is a decision which has caught
us by surprise," a startled Uribe told reporters.
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- Letting the Orejuela brothers go free would severely
damage Colombia's relations with the United States, which has spent $1.5
billion in mostly military aid in Colombia to fight a drug industry that
exports some 580 tons of cocaine per year.
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- Uribe, who took office in August, is seeking more cooperation
from the United States to fight drugs.
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- Suarez said he ordered the release of the Orejuela brothers
because they had "served three-fifths of their sentence and had led
a correct social behavior in prison." The two are serving time in
the Combita maximum security prison, near Bogota.
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- "THE CALI CARTEL IS ALIVE"
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- "I think the Cali Cartel is alive. The Cali Cartel
today is still sending cocaine to the United States," said Alfonso
Plazas, director of Colombia's National Drug Office.
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- If such accusations are proved, the United States could
seek the extradition of the Orejuela brothers. Colombia banned the extradition
of its citizens in 1991, but under pressure from the United States Bogota
lifted the ban in 1997 -- after the Cali Cartel was said to have been dismantled.
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- In 2001, Colombia extradited to the United States Fabio
Ochoa -- a former lieutenant of the legendary Escobar.
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- Drug officials in the United States and Colombia have
said that after the collapse of the Medellin and the Cali cartels in the
1990s, leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary outlaws assumed control
of Colombia's drug industry.
-
- The vacuum left by the flamboyant Escobar and the Orejuela
brothers -- whose luxurious lifestyles included wild parties thrown at
sprawling villas with private zoos -- has been filled by a new generation
of low-profile, sophisticated drug lords.
-
- In 1994, disgraced President Ernesto Samper, who ruled
Colombia from 1994 to 1998, was accused of accepting $6 million in campaign
contributions from the Cali drug cartel.
-
- Gilberto, 63, and Miguel, 59, were captured in June and
August of 1995, crowning spectacular manhunts in which Colombia boasted
to the world it had dealt a deadly blow to drug lords who had traumatized
its society and undermined the Andean nation's political system with drug
money and corruption.
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