ATTORNEY ON EDGE AS WARLORD IN COLOMBIA REMAINS MISSING

Peace Talks Stop; Drug Traffickers Drug Traffickers Fearing Betrayal

MIAMI - Joaquin Perez should have been focused on one thing. Perez,
an attorney who graduated from the University of Massachusetts and
Boston College Law School, was part of the host committee at a local
fund-raiser on April 20 for Democratic presidential candidate John F.
Kerry. His job was to make Kerry feel at home.

But Perez had other serious matters to preoccupy him. Perez, who
represents some of the most notorious drug traffickers in the Southern
Hemisphere, was concerned about the Colombian right-wing paramilitary
leader Carlos Castao.

Castao was targeted April 16 when gunmen went after him and his family
at a jungle hide-out in northern Colombia. He is thought to have
escaped, although several of his bodyguards were killed.

Reverberations from the attack have been felt all the way to Miami,
where Perez lives with his wife and two children.

''This is going to impact me," Perez said after the attack. ''The
rules of the game have changed, and the people who have power are the
people who do not have the same views that Carlos Castao has."

The United States has asked for Castao's extradition on charges of
transporting 17 tons of cocaine through Florida. Castao, who is still
at large, has maintained his innocence, but the prospect that the
paramilitary leader will hand himself over to US authorities has made
him a wanted man in the Colombian underworld; and the prospect that
Perez is facilitating this handover makes the lawyer a target as well.

''I'm not going to get an armored car," he said. But ''I have to be
careful."

It has been a long and strange path that has led Perez, a 52-year-old
Cuban-American and self-described liberal Democrat, to work so closely
with the likes of Castao. Perez's family moved from Spain to Boston in
1968. Through college and law school, Perez's parents worked in a
factory in Watertown Square that made medical instruments.

''In other places, they value money," Perez recalled of his years in
the Northeast. ''In Boston, they value education."

After law school, Perez worked as a public defender in Rhode Island
before making his way to Miami and slipping into private practice. It
was the 1980s, the drug-trafficking heyday in South Florida. Many of
Perez's clients were involved in the illegal trade.

By the 1990s, Perez was making regular trips to Colombia, and in 1999,
a client introduced the lawyer to Castao, who later broke with his
paramilitary group and spoke out against traffickers. Despite their
political differences, the two men immediately found common cause. ''I
got to know a man of integrity," Castao once said of his lawyer, ''a
man who wanted to fight against drug trafficking, get these countries
back to normal. [His] interest went much further than simply the law.
[He wanted] to contribute, to end these problems, and avoid violence."

The feeling is mutual. Despite reports that Castao's paramilitary
organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its
Spanish initials AUC, massacres civilians in its fight against
left-wing guerrillas in that country, Perez has maintained that Castao
is more of a reconciling force than a divisive one.

For years, the two men played key roles in the US war on drugs. In
Colombia, Castao protected drug traffickers who wanted to turn
themselves over to US authorities; in Miami, Perez defended these
traffickers, often brokering agreements with drug enforcement agents
and prosecutors who significantly lowered the sentences of these
traffickers in return for their cooperation on other investigations.
''I am absolutely sure that many people who collaborated with the
United States did so because they had the backing of Carlos Castao,"
Perez said. ''Whether we like it or not, he was a political animal
with political ambitions who had decided to bring about changes in
Colombia."

Castao was also a key player in peace negotiations between the AUC and
the government that had begun last year. The attempt on Castao's life
has temporarily halted the talks while authorities sort out the splits
in the AUC.

The last time Perez saw Castao, he said, was in September 2002, when
the lawyer traveled to one of Castao's hide-outs in northern Colombia.
Perez said the two spoke about the peace talks and the increasing
isolation of Castao by his AUC colleagues. Like Castao, many of them
face drug-trafficking charges. Unlike Castao, these men do not like to
help US antidrug agents.

Castao's authority over the AUC has eroded as the United States has
stepped up the pressure on him and his group. First, the State
Department put the AUC on its list of terrorist groups in 2001. Then
in 2002, a US court indicted Castao. Perez said these actions have
debilitated the last remaining US ally in the AUC and perhaps the drug
war in Colombia.

''I hope the US realizes that by undermining him, they are giving more
power to the hard-liners, the big drug-traffickers," Perez said.

Perez said that he has not communicated with his client in weeks and
that he is waiting for Castao, who is married and has an infant
daughter, to reemerge. Some reports have said Castao died in the
attack or was taken prisoner and executed. Perez says Castao is
probably in hiding.

Perez said he himself will not return to Colombia anytime soon. There
was a time he felt safe in that country, especially with Castao in
charge of the AUC. Now he does not feel safe in Miami.