Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, February 08, 2004
Colombia extradites four drug traffickers to US
Colombian authorities extradited four people to the United States for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering, the National Police said on Feb. 7.
Colombian authorities extradited four people to the United States for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering, the National Police said on Saturday.
Three men and a woman were handed over on Friday at the Eldorado international airport outside Bogota to the "US tip staff appointed by the US Embassy for their transfer."
Nelly Patricia Ballestas and John Anderson Velasquez are wanted by a court in Florida while Eduardo Alexander Aguirre is called bya magistrate in New Jersey and Pablo Enrique Arias, by a Virginian judge.
The four had been detained in separate operations carried out in northern, central and southwestern Colombia last year.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has intensified a US-backed anti-drug war and stepped up the pace of extradition of accused drug smugglers to the United States.
Since taking office in August 2002, Uribe has pledged to crack down on drug trafficking and put an end to a four-decade armed conflict in the country. More than 70 suspected drug traffickers have been extradited to the United States.
Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer and the top supplier of heroin to the United States, receives hundreds of millions of US dollars every year in US military assistance to fight drugs and rebels, who were accused of financing their insurgency with drug money.