COLOMBIAN TRAFFICKERS READY TERROR CAMPAIGN IN RESPONSE TO U.S. EXTRADITION
OF DRUG KINGPIN

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Drug dealers say they will begin assassinating
Colombian leaders and supreme court judges until the government reverses its
decision to allow a notorious drug kingpin to be extradited to the United
States.

"We won't allow the immoral American drug addicts to try us," reads an
advertisement published all this week in newspapers in the sprawling city of
Cali, located 185 miles (300 kilometers) from the capital, Bogota, in
drug-producing southern Colombia.

The ad, paid for by a group know as the Our Country Movement, goes on to
directly threaten "judges, government ministers, representatives of the
Supreme Court and all others that authorized extradition of the Colombian
nationals."

The group claims to be an offshoot of the notorious 1980s drug-financed
terrorist faction "The Un-extraditables."

It says in the ad "we are not looking for a war like that of Pablo Escobar,
but we will fight to stop all Colombian extraditions."

Escobar, shot and killed by state forces in 1993, was the longtime head of
the ruthless Medellin Cartel, named for the western Colombia city from which
it operated.

Also a former Colombian senator, Escobar became a worldwide celebrity as the
iron-fisted ruler of the Medellin faction, which controlled the world's
cocaine trade until his death and used car bombs and machine guns to wage a
prolonged and bloody terrorist-style war against state forces.

The ad also makes reference to Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, which
was the 1980s headquarters of many of Colombia's other powerful
cocaine-trafficking contingents before infighting and arrests succeeded in
breaking up the area's most powerful cartels.

Threats published in Cali this week foretold a reign of terror similar to
one the Un-extraditables unleashed between 1984 and 1991 to head-off the
Colombian government extradition efforts under the slogan "better a
Colombian tomb than an American jail cell."

Car bombs planted all over this Andean nation killed more than 50 people in
the 7-year period including presidential candidates, mayors, judges,
journalists and dozens of innocent bystanders.

As a result of the violence, Colombian courts overturned their own
extradition orders in 1991. A new law again allowing U.S. extradition was
drafted six years later.

Last week the Colombian Supreme Court ruled that Orlandez Gamboa, head of a
drug cartel based in Barranquilla on this country's Caribbean coast, could
become the third Colombian extradited to the United States since the country
lifted its extradition-ban.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana, an avid supporter of U.S. extradition,
immediately signed the order which clears the way for Gamboa to stand trial
in Manhattan.

"As human beings we are obviously frightened of serious threats like these,"
Edgar Lombana, president of the Colombian Supreme Court's sentencing arm,
said Thursday. "But these threats will not stop the court or the court's
officials from bringing these criminals to justice."

U.S. federal prosecutors say Gamboa conspired to import thousands of
kilograms (pounds) of cocaine from Colombia to New York and other U.S.
destinations and distribute it. He is also accused of smuggling cocaine to
Europe since 1991 and conspiring to launder millions of dollars in drug
profits.

The 44-year-old Gamboa, nicknamed "The Snail," now becomes one of 52
suspected drug traffickers awaiting trail in U.S. courts, according to U.S.
Justice Department figures.