COLOMBIAN REBELS CHARGED

U.S. Targets Leaders Of Leftist Guerrillas

WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft on Wednesday announced a new
round of criminal charges against Colombia's largest outlaw army, indicting
the group's No. 2 leader and other left-wing rebels for drug trafficking
and the kidnapping of two American citizens.

The charges marked the latest sign that the Bush administration is
extending the reach of U.S. justice to combat outlaw groups in the
embattled Latin American nation and stepping up support for Colombia
President Alvaro Uribe Velez.

Ashcroft said authorities would hunt the indicted combatants from the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, including No. 2 leader Jorge
Briceno Suarez, "as long as it takes . . . no matter where they hide."

In the past two weeks, U.S. prosecutors have broken up an arms-for-cocaine
scheme allegedly run by Colombia's right-wing paramilitary army and smashed
a kidnapping ring. Earlier in the year, other left-wing guerrillas, arms
merchants and the nation's top paramilitary chief were indicted for crimes
allegedly committed in or against the United States.

The target of Wednesday's action is a rebel army, known by its Spanish
initials as the FARC, deeply enmeshed in the narcotics trade. It now has
some 18,000 combatants.

Briceno Suarez, a burly, beret-clad commander, and two lower-ranking rebels
of the FARC were charged with kidnapping U.S. citizens Jerel Shaffer and
Earl Goen from a fishing camp in western Venezuela in 1997. Rebels took
Shaffer to Colombian territory, and held him for nine months until a $1
million ransom was paid.

"If convicted on all counts, the defendants face the maximum penalty of
death," Ashcroft said.