COLOMBIA SUSPENDS EXTRADITION OF DRUG LORD TO U.S.

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug 31 (Reuters) - A Colombian judge on Friday suspended
the extradition of Fabio Ochoa, a former henchman of late drug lord Pablo
Escobar, saying the United States had failed to prove he broke the law
outside Colombia, officials said.

Bogota judge Maria Claudia Merchan gave the United States 10 days to
provide evidence of his involvement in a ring that allegedly smuggled $1
billion of cocaine a month to the United States and Europe, Ochoa's lawyer
Irving Garces told Reuters.

"The crimes committed were in Colombia. And according to the Colombian
constitution one cannot be extradited only for crimes committed in
Colombia," Garces said.

Colombia's Supreme Court last week approved a U.S. request for Ochoa's
extradition and President Andres Pastrana signed the extradition order on
Monday. Ochoa had been expected to be sent to the United States as early as
Sept 3.

Ochoa was captured in October 1999 in "Operation Millennium" -- carried out
jointly by the Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In a copy of the ruling obtained by Reuters, Merchan said the case against
Ochoa still needed to be clarified.

"Colombia desires that the legal action should protect the individual and
that, when extradited, certain conditions are met," Merchan's ruling said.

From Bombing Campaign To Media Blitz

Before allegedly embarking on a second career in drugs in the late 1990s,
Ochoa had previously been a leader of the dismantled Medellin drug cartel
run by Escobar.

He was one of a group of drug barons who waged a bloody war against
extradition in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the battle cry "better a
tomb in Colombia than a cell in the United States."

The group, which called themselves the "Extraditables," eventually pushed a
constitutional assembly to briefly ban extradition after a relentless
campaign of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations that killed and maimed
thousands.

Ochoa was released from prison in 1996 after serving 5-1/2 years for
trafficking with the Medellin cartel. He had turned himself in under a
government program that allowed traffickers who confessed to avoid
extradition and serve reduced sentences.

The youngest son of a wealthy horse breeder from Medellin, Ochoa has
launched a media blitz to avoid extradition. He set up a Web site,
http:/www.fabioochoa.com, and paid for billboards proclaiming his innocence.

He took out an advertisement earlier this week in the local daily El Tiempo
saying: "I turned myself in to justice with the guarantee that I was not
going to be extradited. I upheld the deal. I want the state to uphold the
deal."

The government lifted its ban on extradition of Colombian citizens to the
United States in 1997, under heavy pressure from Washington.