DRUG TRAFFICKER SENT TO US FOR TRIAL

Jailed Drug Cartel Leader Sent to U.S. to Stand Trial

An imprisoned former leader of the Cali cocaine cartel has been
unexpectedly expelled from Panama and sent to the United States to stand
trial on charges of bringing more than 15 tons of drugs to this country and
laundering millions of dollars in illicit proceeds from the sales.

Jose Castrillon Henao, arrested in Panama in April 1996 and held in a
maximum security cell since, was taken to Howard Air Base, west of Panama
City, "under extraordinary security" at about 7:55 p.m. Sunday, put on a
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration airplane and arrived at MacDill Air
Force Base in Florida at 1 a.m. yesterday, according to the Organized Crime
Drug Enforcement Task Force, which was responsible for the operation.

The statement charges that Castrillon was "the primary maritime transporter
for and a member of the Cali cartel," the Colombian trafficking
organization that until recently was the most sophisticated on Earth.

Castrillon's indictment was unsealed yesterday in U.S. District Court in
Tampa, Fla., when Castrillon appeared in court to hear the charges against
him. Along with Castrillon, the indictment names a U.S. citizen, five
Colombians, six Chileans, a Mexican, a Canadian and a Panamanian as
co-defendants.

Officials familiar with the case said Castrillon was the leader of one of
the Cali cartel's most important and sophisticated maritime drug
trafficking operations. They allege Castrillon used the Colombian ports of
Cartagena and Buenaventura to operate a fleet of commercial fishing vessels
that were used to ship tons of cocaine to the United States.

Castrillon also is charged with masterminding elaborate schemes to launder
hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the sales utilizing a maze
of maritime, real estate and investment companies in the United States,
Panama, Ecuador, Switzerland, Germany and France to hide the source of drug
profits.

The expulsion of Castrillon, a Colombian citizen, came just days after
Panama changed its laws to allow the expulsion of foreign nationals in
prison there. While the United States expressed interest in eventually
having Castrillon stand trial in the United States, U.S. officials said the
move was unexpectedly quick and caught them off-guard and not as prepared
as they had hoped to be.

In 1996, following Castrillon's arrest and the collapse of a bank where he
had accounts totaling several million dollars, Panamanian investigators
found Castrillon had given at least $51,000 to the 1994 campaign of
President Ernesto Perez Balladares. Perez Balladares acknowledged the money
went to his campaign but said he did not know Castrillon.

U.S. officials said the sudden move to expel Castrillon may have been the
result of fears the Colombian would make good on threats he had repeatedly
made from prison to go public with the names of those in the Panamanian
government who had protected him and his operation. Before his arrest,
Castrillon was a well-known businessman in Panama and dabbled in local
politics.

"That is what it looks like to us," said a U.S. official familiar with the
case. "Suddenly he is shipped out, we have to scramble to get the
indictments together, and the only thing that makes sense it that he was
just too hot for them to handle. They wanted to get rid of a problem."

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company