US GOES AFTER CALI COCAINE BOSSES

US authorities have filed extradition requests for two of Colombia's most
notorious drug traffickers.

Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela ran the Cali cartel, which dominated
the world's cocaine trade in the 1990s.

The extradition order alleges they have continued to run their empire from
their prison cells in Colombia, where they have been confined since 1995.

President Alvaro Uribe is expected to authorise the request, which must
also go through the supreme court.

The Rodriguez Orejuela brothers are charged with smuggling 55 tonnes of
cocaine, laundering about $2bn and silencing those who might testify
against them, either through bribery or by murder.

The US indictment alleges the brothers ran the cartel through Miguel
Rodriguez Orejuela's son William Rodriguez Abadia

If the request goes ahead, the brothers would become the highest-profile
drug lords to be sent to the US to face justice since Colombia lifted a ban
on extradition in 1997.

President Uribe has stepped up the pace of extradition of drug smugglers to
the US, where they face tougher jail sentences than in Colombia.

'The Chess Player'

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, known in the drugs underworld as "the chess
player" for his ability to outwit opponents, was released from prison last
year for good behaviour. He had served a seven-year sentence.

But he was re-arrested on an order from the president that he be put back
"behind bars".

He was subsequently convicted of being involved in the smuggling of 150
kilograms of cocaine to the US via Costa Rica in 1995.

The recapture of Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela was welcomed by the US, which
long pushed for the brothers to be extradited.

However, many of the crimes that the US charging the brothers with
pre-dated the 1997 order by the Colombian government to reintroduce
extradition.

The Rodriguez Orejuela brothers are thought to have once controlled 80% of
the world's supply of cocaine in the early 1990s.

They obtained the monopoly of the multi-billion dollar industry after rival
drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed by police in 1993.

Escobar had run the Medellin cocaine cartel.

In 2001, Colombia extradited to the US a former leader of the Medellin
cocaine cartel. Fabio Ochoa was sentenced by a court in Miami to 30 years
in prison.