US TAKES ON NEW POWERS TO TRY 'DRUG GUERRILLAS'

America yesterday named Colombia's Marxist guerrillas and Right-wing
paramilitaries as international drugs trafficking groups, opening the
way for their leaders to face extradition and trial in US courts.

The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc and the
paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) were already
designated terrorist groups.

But that meant they could face American justice, rather than
Colombia's corrupt and overburdened courts, only if Americans were
victims of their activities. Now the US Treasury Department has added
37 new names to its list of drug "kingpins", including the high
command of both groups.

"These Kingpin Act designations reinforce the reality that the Farc
and the AUC are not simply terrorist/guerrilla organisations fighting
within Colombia to promote political agendas," said a Treasury
spokesman. "They are part and parcel of the narcotics production and
export threat to the United States, as well as Europe and other
countries in Latin America."

Between them, the two warring factions have more than 30,000 heavily
armed fighters and earn up to $1 billion (UKP 530 million) a year,
putting them among the most powerful and richest crime syndicates in
the world.

As well as potential extradition, the new designation gives US
authorities the right to freeze the assets of any companies linked to
the two groups or doing business with them.

The warring factions not only control most of the territory where the
drug crops - coca for cocaine and poppy for heroin - are grown, but
run laboratories and export routes, shipping much of the estimated 800
tons of cocaine and 10 tons of heroin that leave Colombia every year.