BOGOTA CAPTURES TOP DRUG BARON

COLOMBIAN troops have claimed their biggest drug war victory in years with
the capture of the Brazilian drug lord Luis Fernando da Costa.

Da Costa, 33, was arrested after a three-day manhunt in dense jungle on the
border between Colombia and Brazil. The Cessna plane in which he was
travelling had been forced to make an emergency landing by Colombian Air
Force jets. Three hundred members of the Colombian Army's anti-narcotics
unit then chased da Costa and three associates through rain-forest
vegetation in Colombia's southern district of Vichada. "Aside from being
the most-wanted man on the drug baron list, Fernando da Costa will be our
key witness to confirm that FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)
rebels are actively involved in the cocaine trade," General Jorge Enrique
Mora, who had headed the hunt, said.

Da Costa, 33, a former kingpin of Rio de Janeiro's shantytown drug trade,
escaped from a Brazilian prison in 1996. He is reported to have been
operating out of the Colombian jungle since fleeing Paraguay several months
ago.

President Pastrana, in Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas, said
that Colombia was studying the possibility of extraditing da Costa to
Brazil, where he has been sentenced to multiple 30-year terms for
drug-trafficking and murder.