COLOMBIAN HITMAN ARRESTED

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) A hitman for a Colombian drug cartel, wanted in the
1992 killing of a Cuban-American journalist in New York City, has been
arrested in Medellin for money laundering, prosecutors said today.

Guillermo Leon Restrepo, 41, was taken into custody by federal agents
outside a shopping center Saturday after a two-month manhunt, said Humberto
Reyes, a top aide in the chief prosecutor's office.

Federal investigators believe Restrepo and his wife, Paulina Maria Berrio,
laundered millions of dollars in drug money through a phony Bogota-based
real estate agency in Berrio's name.

Restrepo earned much of the money, investigators said, by hiring contract
killers for the now-defunct Cali cocaine cartel, whose top leaders are
either jailed in Colombia or dead.

Berrio, 38, was arrested Monday at a lunch counter in downtown Bogota, where
she tried to evade capture by posing as a waitress.

U.S. prosecutors believe Restrepo arranged the March 1992 slaying in New
York of journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue, a former editor at Diario-La
Prensa, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in New York.

Unanue was shot in the back of head at a restaurant in the borough of
Queens. Before he was killed, Unanue had published magazine articles
critical of the Cali cartel, which had operations in Queens.

Six people have been convicted in the slaying, including the Colombian teen-
ager who pulled the trigger. But Restrepo, who faces a U.S. arrest warrant,
had eluded the law.

"He's the last person that remains at large or alive to be brought to
justice on this case," said Eric Friedberg, an assistant U.S. Attorney in
Brooklyn who prosecuted the case.

Acting on orders from the cartel's former No. 3 leader, Jose Santacruz
Londono, Restrepo paid $50,000 to an intermediary, John Harold Mena, who
contracted the killer, Friedberg said.

Mena was convicted in a U.S. court and sentenced to 18 years in prison in
1996. That same year, Santacruz died in a gunfight with Colombian police.

Describing him as a "schizophrenic" prone to lengthy cocaine and alcohol
binges, federal investigators said Restrepo is also a suspect in the slaying
of his sister five years ago and of two psychiatrists who treated him.

Restrepo evaded capture for so long by moving frequently between Bogota,
Medellin, Cali the country's three largest cities and Santa Marta, a
Caribbean port, said the investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Although Restrepo was arrested on money-laundering charges, Colombian
officials said they hoped to charge him in the Unanue killing. While U.S.
prosecutors would like to see him tried in the United States, Colombian law
only permits extradition for crimes committed after December 1997.