DRUG LORD BATTLES EXTRADITION ON WEBSITE

Imprisoned Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa has a website:

It features chat rooms, Ochoa's interpretation of Colombian law, pictures
of him and a highlighted section, where he urges Colombian President Andres
Pastrana not to extradite him to the United States.

"Yesterday I made a mistake," blares the Web page headline. "Today I'm
innocent."

Pastrana's response: He signed an order Monday authorizing the extradition
of Ochoa, one of the few surviving members of the old Medellin cartel.
Ochoa, his Miami lawyer says, could be in South Florida next week.

Jose Quinon, who represents Ochoa, said his client's populist-themed Web
page is geared to get out his side of the story.

The website claims 45,798 visitors during the past year.

"What happens in cases like this, the government tries to dredge up all the
history of an individual from his past doings," Quinon said. "That
invariably poisons the jury."

Ochoa, 45, an inmate at the La Picota prison in Bogota, faces trial in U.S.
District Court for allegedly smuggling 30 tons of cocaine through Mexico
and into the United States, earning about $45 million a month, federal
prosecutors say.

Aloyma Sanchez, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, did
not return calls for comment.

Ochoa claims the Colombian government betrayed him after he surrendered to
Colombian authorities in 1990 under an offer by then President Cesar
Gaviria to protect any drug lord from extradition who gave up peacefully.

Ochoa and his older brothers served five years in prison.

Ochoa, U.S. and Colombian authorities claim, returned to drug smuggling
after his 1996 release.

Three years later, federal prosecutors charged him along with 30 other
suspects in a massive drug probe called Operation Millennium.

On his Web page, Ochoa claims a U.S. drug enforcement agent misrepresented
wiretapped conversations he had with a suspected drug boss in his Bogota
office -- the basis for the government's indictment against him.

"I say nothing about participating in drug trafficking," Ochoa claims.

Ochoa also reaches out to rebel groups, a former Colombian president, the
country's chief justice -- even Nobel-Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia
Marquez.

"I am innocent and the nation, my family and I will be grateful to you for
any public statement you might make, asking the national government to
refrain from turning the struggle against drug trafficking into a witch
hunt," Ochoa wrote.