COLOMBIA CARTEL LEADERS FACE NEW CHARGES

According To A New U.S. Indictment, Brothers Miguel and Gilberto
Rodriguez-Orejuela Continued To Rule Over The Cali Cartel From Their
Colombian Prison Cells.

The brothers behind the Cali Cartel are facing new U.S. charges accusing
them of trafficking more than 55 tons of cocaine, laundering $2 billion in
proceeds and silencing witnesses with money and murder.

According to a new federal indictment unsealed Monday in Miami, Miguel
Rodriguez-Orejuela and older brother Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela continued
to lord over the cartel from their Colombian prison cells.

Led by businessmen in well-tailored suits, the Cali Cartel surpassed the
gun-slinging Medellin Cartel as Colombia's biggest cocaine trafficking
organization after the December 1993 killing of Pablo Escobar on a Medellin
rooftop.

''In its heyday, the Cali Cartel was believed to be responsible for about
80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States. It was also
responsible for countless murders and a reign of terror in Colombia,'' said
Jesus Torres, interim special agent in charge with the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement in Miami.

The brothers were rearrested, and served copies of the new indictment, in
their respective cells Monday.

A manhunt is under way in Colombia for Miguel's elder son, William
RodriguezAbadia, who is charged with taking over the cartel's day-to- day
operations since his father and uncle went to prison in 1995.

A total of 11 men were indicted. Four are in custody: the jailed brothers,
the cartel's chief accountant Luis Eduardo Cuartas-Pardo, and a fourth man
who is pending positive identification.

The case, investigators say, stands to make history in the annals of the
international drug prosecutions.

While more than 100 cartel drug runners, money launderers, couriers and
lawyers have been prosecuted in U.S. courts, the Rodriguez-Orejuelas have
been indicted at least three times by U.S. grand juries -- twice before in
Miami -- but never brought to justice here.

But under the terms of a 1997 treaty that resumed extradition with Colombia
and a friendly government, police and military apparatus under President
Alvaro Uribe, the brothers are expected to be sent to Miami to face trial
within a year.

Many of the drug-trafficking, money laundering and witness-tampering
charges contained in the new indictment predate the 1997 treaty and have
been mentioned in other indictments, trials, court records and affidavits.

But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Ed Kacerosky, who has been
tracking the Cali Cartel since the early 1990s, received information two
years ago that the brothers had resumed running the cartel from prison
through cellphones and regular visits with family members.

RECENT EXTRADITIONS

All of that information has been bolstered with the recent extraditions of
other high-profile cartel figures -- including Victor Patino-Fomeque -- who
are now cooperating with authorities.

Operation Cornerstone started in 1990 after Customs officials began
intercepting large-scale loads of cocaine hidden in concrete fence posts,
frozen broccoli, lumber, ceramic tile, pool tables, coffee and chlorine
cylinders.

In 1995, Kacerosky and federal prosecutors put together an indictment
charging 59 people with operating a $2 billion cocaine distribution
enterprise dating back to 1983.

Six lawyers in the case, including three former federal prosecutors, one of
whom served as the top official who oversaw investigations of the Cali
Cartel, were indicted.

Four of the six lawyers pleaded guilty. The other two were convicted at
trials. Prosecutors said the dirty lawyers distributed hush money to
captured cartel operatives and solicited false affidavits that would
exonerate the brothers.

In the new case, the cartel members are charged with silencing their
associates through bribes and violence, preventing them from cooperating
with agents or testifying before grand juries or at trial.

The feds say Miguel Rodriguez-Orejuela sent Guillermo Restrepo Lara to
Miami to arrange for the murder of Rafael Lombrano, who was expected to
testify in an upcoming case. Lombrano was murdered on Oct. 14, 1990.

Restrepo was indicted Monday and remains at large.

The indictment says Restrepo also murdered another potential government
witness, Leonidas Rhadames Trujillo, and three companions in August 1994.

HIT ORDERED

In August 1997, agents say, the brothers ordered a hit on the manager of a
C=FAcuta, Colombia, company that had previously exported their
cocaine-laden chlorine cylinders to Houston.

The brothers are also accused of making regular monthly commissary payments
to several jailed cartel associates in Florida and Texas, hoping to buy
their silence, as well as monthly ''subsistence payments'' to their
relatives and common-law wives.

Torres said the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers will be moved, with the help of
the Colombian government, to a high-security military prison pending the
outcome of extradition hearings.

U.S. lawyers attached to the embassy in Bogota filed the initial requests
for extradition over the weekend and hope to have the brothers on American
soil to face trial within a year.

If they are extradited, the Miami trial would become the biggest drug war
showcase since the conviction this year of former Medellin Cartel leader
Fabio Ochoa.

He is appealing his conviction and 30-year sentence handed down in August.