COLOMBIA EXTRADITES SUSPECTED DRUG LORD

He is the first to face U.S. charges since '90

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Authorities on Sunday whisked an alleged mob boss
known as the "King of Heroin" to Florida to face U.S. justice on
narcotics charges. It was the first such extradition of a suspected
drug lord to the United States since 1990.

Wearing handcuffs and looking grim, Jaime Orlando Lara Nausa, 30, was
put aboard a twin-engine U.S. aircraft headed for Fort Lauderdale,
officials said. Lara is wanted in both New York and Florida on charges
that his alleged narcotics ring shipped about 20 pounds of pure heroin
a week to the United States through Florida.

President Andres Pastrana's decision to revive a practice of
extradition coincides with growing concern among Colombians that drug
lords may resort to bombs -- as they did in the late 1980s and early
1990s -- to avoid trial and lengthy jail terms in the United States.

A car bomb 10 days ago in northern Bogota killed eight people.
Police said drug gangs or leftist rebels were responsible. A decade
ago, Medellin cartel chief Pablo Escobar and his followers led a
vicious anti-extradition campaign of bombings and murders, leading
Colombia to ban extradition in the 1991 constitution. Amid intense
U.S. pressure, Colombia's Congress lifted the ban in late 1997.

Lara may become the first of many Colombians headed to U.S. courts.
About 40 suspected drug bosses await possible extradition -- including
31 people arrested Oct. 14 in Operation Millennium, a sweeping drug
raid in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the United States. Among those
arrested was Fabio Ochoa, allegedly a leader of the Medellin
cartel in its heyday a decade earlier.

Cooperating With U.S.

The RCN television newscast said a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration Cessna aircraft was waiting on a Bogota runway to
take another suspected drug lord, Jose Fernando Flores Garmendia, to
stand trial in the United States. Flores, known as ``El Gordo,'' or
``The Fat Man,'' could prove valuable to U.S. counter-drug
authorities. Before his arrest last year, Flores regularly visited the
jailed heads of the powerful Cali cartel, Miguel and Gilberto
Rodriguez Orejuela, in Bogota prisons, and could implicate them
in alleged ongoing trafficking from jail, officials say.

In a written statement, Flores acknowledged that ``the only thing that
interests the gringos is that . . . I become an instrument for the
extradition of these men.''

While Colombia has lengthened jail terms, drug traffickers still do
not face the multiple life terms often handed down in the United
States. Moreover, convicted drug lords serve time in prison cell
blocks with individual television sets and bathrooms, conjugal visits,
extensive visiting privileges and lenient conditions for early parole.

In late October, prison authorities said they smashed a plan to let
four alleged drug bosses walk out of Bogota's Modelo Prison dressed
as police officers. All four are on a list to be extradited.

The last drug lords sent to the United States for trial were Joaquin
Gallo Chamorro, Rafel Hernen Buchelli and Jose Ortiz in September
1990.

Escaped Arrest In N.Y.

Lara, who is known variously as ``Jimmy'' and the ``King of Heroin,''
barely avoided arrest in mid-1998 in New York City, slipping into
Colombia, where he was arrested last December. Lara worked closely
with Dominican and Mexican traffickers to expand Colombia's growing
role in the heroin trade in the United States, police said.