POLICE SMASH POWERFUL COLOMBIA HEROIN 'MAFIA'

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Anti-drug police smashed Colombia's ''most
powerful'' heroin mob on Wednesday, seizing the alleged ringleader, a
cousin of former drug capo Pablo Escobar, and 45 others accused of
smuggling more than $9 million of heroin to the United States and
Europe each month.

The gang purportedly shipped up to 110 pounds (50 kg) of heroin a
month, hidden inside rubber penis-shaped sex aids, women's bras and
false-bottomed suitcases, police said. Officials had initially
estimated the quantity of drugs smuggled at 220 pounds (100 kg) but
later revised that figure.

Almost 1,600 agents, drawing on U.S. intelligence information and
backed by a fleet of planes and helicopter gunships, launched pre-dawn
raids in four cities and a handful of towns in what was dubbed
``Operation Millennium II''.

The arrests coincided with a visit to Washington by President Andres
Pastrana, who is urgently lobbying for a $1.3 billion U.S. package of
mostly military aid to fight the drug war and Marxist rebels that is
currently bogged down in the U.S. Senate.

``The Colombian police has delivered a fresh blow to the mafias of the
drug trade and captured 46 members of one of the most powerful heroin
distribution and export networks,'' said National Police chief Gen.
Rosso Jose Serrano, who led the operation.

A number of weapons, vehicles and communications equipment was
confiscated during the raids, he added.

Serrano said the cartel shipped drugs to the United States, Spain, the
Netherlands and Italy. Its leader was allegedly Nicolas Urquijo,
cousin of Pablo Escobar, the kingpin of the notorious Medellin drug
mob who died in a rooftop shoot-out with police in 1993.

World's Largest Drug Producer

Images broadcast on Colombian television showed Urquijo, dressed in
jeans and an olive-green T-shirt, being bundled aboard a police
airplane in the northwest city of Medellin early Wednesday. It was not
immediately clear where he was being taken.

Most of the arrests were made in the southwest city of Cali,
Colombia's second largest city and powerbase of the now-defunct Cali
drug mob, once blamed for supplying 80 percent of the world's cocaine.

At a mid-morning news conference in Cali a group of the detainees,
some in handcuffs, were paraded before television cameras under the
guard of heavily-armed police officers.

``This is a job we have been doing and will continue. These mafiosos
cannot hide,'' said Leo Areguin, chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) in Colombia, at the news conference.

Colombia is the world's largest cocaine producer with an output of
some 520 tons per year. It is also a leading supplier of heroin to the
United States, with production of some six tons per year, according to
the DEA.

A kilo of Colombian heroin fetches around $185,000 wholesale in the
United States and much more on the streets, according to DEA figures.

Wednesday's sweep came exactly six months after the so-called
``Operation Millennium'' in which police arrested 31 people accused of
shipping up to $1 billion of cocaine per month to the United States
and Europe. Most of those are wanted in the United States and are
likely to be extradited.

It was not clear if any of those arrested Wednesday would face
extradition to stand trial in U.S. courts.

Pablo Escobar fought a bloody war of kidnappings, bombings and
assassinations against the state throughout the 1980s in a successful
bid to force the government to scrap its extradition treaties.
Congress lifted the six-year ban on extradition in late 1997.

Sentences for drug crimes are much more severe in the United States,
with traffickers facing multiple life terms behind bars, whereas in
Colombia major capos have walked free in less than 10 years.