U.S. CHARGES 50 COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS IN DRUG-SMUGGLING CASE

In what federal authorities called the nation's largest drug
trafficking case, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has
indicted 50 top leaders and local commanders of Colombia's guerrilla army.

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday a sweeping indictment
charging members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
with smuggling more than $25 billion worth of cocaine into the United States.

In a separate case, federal prosecutors in Miami seek to extradite
three FARC associates with ties to South Florida's drug trade from
Colombia. The men are charged with plotting to import up to 2,000
kilograms of cocaine per month into Miami.

"The entire Department of Justice, including every U.S. attorney's
office, is focused on combating the problem of narco-violence and
stemming the flow of illegal drugs into the United States," U.S.
Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said.

Three suspects named in the Washington indictment also are in
Colombian custody and the U.S. is seeking their extradition. The
State Department announced more than $75 million in rewards for
information that leads to the capture of the others.

Created in the mid-1960s, the FARC is a highly organized guerilla
army of roughly 15,000 that uses proceeds from the cocaine trade to
bankroll violent attacks on the Colombian government. The U.S.
Department of State considers the group a terrorist organization.

With the FARC controlling large swaths of Colombian territory, some
experts said apprehending the remaining defendants might prove
difficult, particularly because they hide in dense jungles.

"That's kind of a hit and miss," said Ambler Moss, professor of
international studies at the University of Miami. "The FARC are hard to catch."

Moss doubts the U.S. indictments and extradition requests would
disrupt Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's peace negotiations with
the guerrilla group.

"This is a commitment on the part of the U.S. to continue to pursue
people involved in the drug trade," said Moss, who was U.S.
ambassador to Panama during the Carter and Reagan administrations.
"This is not the U.S. meddling in Colombian affairs."

Federal officials said the FARC supplies more than half of the
world's cocaine and more than 60 percent of the cocaine entering the
United States. To protect their hold on cocaine exports from
Colombia, FARC commanders ordered executions of farmers who violated
their rules, U.S. officials said.

According to the indictment, farmers who sold raw cocaine to other
buyers would be shot, stabbed, or dismembered alive.

"This is no longer a revolutionary movement," said Jerry Haar,
professor of management and international business at Florida
International University. "This is a networked criminal gang with
ties to the drug cartel."

News of the indictments brought a measured response from some
Colombians in South Florida.

Orlando Gonzalez, a real estate developer who moved to Florida from
Colombia eight years ago, supports the U.S. government's efforts to
prosecute Colombian drug traffickers. But he said officials have to
tackle the source of the problem -- drug consumption in the United States.

Gonzalez said the indictments also counter European assessments of
the guerrillas as freedom fighters battling Colombia's oligarchy.

"This indictment presents them to the world as international
terrorists," Gonzalez said.

Colombian officials in 2004 arrested Jorge Enrique Rodriguez
Mendieta, one of the more senior FARC officials named in the
indictment. Authorities said Rodriguez Mendieta served on the FARC's
leadership council and had rebels purchase hundreds of thousands of
kilograms of cocaine paste -- the mixture of coca leaves and
chemicals used to make cocaine.

Erminso Cuevas Cabrera and Juan Jose Martinez Vega, also in custody,
helped produce cocaine and exchange cocaine for arms, according to
the indictment.

Venezuelan authorities arrested Martinez Vega last year when police
rescued Maura Villarreal, the mother of Detroit Tigers pitcher Ugueth
Urbina. Kidnappers held Villarreal in a remote Venezuelan mountain
camp and demanded $6 million ransom. When police arrested Martinez
Vega, he had roughly 700 kilograms of cocaine, according to U.S. officials.