COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARY CHIEF FACING US DRUG CHARGES

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government on Tuesday accused outlaw paramilitary
leader Carlos Castano and two other members of his powerful anti-guerrilla
army in Colombia of smuggling 17 tons of cocaine to the United States and
Europe over the past five years.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, noting that Castano recently said he wanted
to "face the U.S. justice system," called on the sought-after paramilitary
leader to "surrender to United States authorities."

Within an hour of the federal indictment announcement, unconfirmed news
reports said Castano, 36, had bid farewell to his troops in the mountains
of northern Colombia and was preparing to surrender. A spokesman for
Castano later denied the reports.

Castano's Miami attorney, Joaquin Perez, said he could not confirm
Castano's whereabouts. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Miami and
Washington said they did not know if Castano planned to surrender.

NATIONS' RELATIONS

The indictments of Castano, fellow commander Salvatore Mancuso and
paramilitary member Juan Carlos Sierra-Ramirez came at a critical juncture
in U.S.-Colombia relations and as President Alvaro Uribe visited Washington
seeking sustained economic and military assistance to regain control of his
homeland.

Human rights monitors blame the 11,000 or so members of Castano's
paramilitary forces for the vast majority of atrocities and massacres in
Colombia in recent years. Even so, Castano has significant support among
Colombians, some of whom view his armed group, the United Self-Defense
Forces of Colombia, or AUC, as fighting harder to stand up to leftist
guerrillas than the conventional army.

In the past half-decade, Castano has emerged as a lightning-rod figure,
both hailed and despised. His raspy voice, scraggly beard and personal
story are widely known. He has said his crusade against leftist guerrillas
began when rebels kidnapped and killed his father in 1980.

Ashcroft called Castano and the two others "violent drug traffickers who
poison our citizens and threaten our national security." He said
convictions on all five counts of drug trafficking could cost them life in
prison.

The 12-page indictment said Castano oversaw a gamut of drug-related
activities, from protecting cocaine-processing laboratories in the jungles
and setting quality and price controls for cocaine, to managing shipments
from coastal Colombia to maritime vessels. It details a series of narcotics
shipments to the United States and Europe using routes through Martinique
in the Caribbean and the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the
coast of Africa.

TWO PRIORITIES

Ashcroft said the investigation began 2 1/2 years ago. A grand jury in the
District of Columbia returned the indictment and, if captured, Castano
would presumably be tried in Washington.

The indictment of the paramilitary leaders marked "the convergence of two
of the top priorities of the Department of Justice: the prevention of
terrorism and the reduction of illegal drug use," Ashcroft said.

The State Department formally labeled Castano's group as a terrorist
organization last year. Tuesday's indictment was the first lodged against
the group. In March, U.S. prosecutors charged several members of leftist
insurgency the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, with
drug trafficking. One alleged rebel was captured in Suriname in June, and
extradited to the United States for trial.

The indictment says Castano ordered paramilitary troops in 1998 to guard
cocaine-processing laboratories near Yarumal and Caucasia, towns in
Antioquia state where Uribe was once governor. The same year, Castano
gathered traffickers in the town of San Pablo, where he brokered protection
fees and "the right of distributors to purchase and export cocaine," it says.

Castano provided shipments of cocaine to other traffickers 10 times,
including a nearly nine-ton shipment in December 1999 stowed aboard the
freighter M/V Nativa, it says. The ship was seized a month later in Arica,
Chile.

In October 2000, unindicted co-conspirators of Mancuso, one of Castano's
confidantes, "murdered and decapitated a drug trafficker in Colombia in
retribution for the failure to pay a debt" to Mancuso, the indictment says.
It adds that Mancuso traveled to Miami in 1997 carrying $11,350 in cash.

Without detail, the indictment says Castano ordered a member of his group
"to threaten an individual" in Miami-Dade County on Feb. 2 and 27 of this year.

Sierra-Ramirez, who goes by the nickname "El Tuso," is accused of a series
of cocaine dealings to compensate for the capture of cocaine aboard the
Nativa. It says he provided an unnamed person with cash to repair a ship in
the Cape Verde Islands in early 2000. The ship was brought near the coast
of Martinique, where a speedboat was to take 2.2 tons of cocaine from
coastal Colombia to the ship, the indictment says.

Perez, Castano's attorney, said the paramilitary leader "can categorically
deny that he has been directly involved" in drug trafficking.

Moreover, Perez said, Castano has cajoled major Colombian drug traffickers
to get out of narcotics smuggling and turn themselves over to U.S.
prosecutors in pursuit of lenient treatment.

In February, Castano presided over a meeting of more than 60 drug
traffickers in the city of Cartago and urged them to abandon the drug
trade, Perez said. Among those at the meeting were Victor Patino Fomeque, a
former Cali cartel leader, and Hernando Gomez, a trafficker from the North
Valley cartel, he said.

"He made it clear that the AUC will not tolerate this type of activity and
he wanted people to submit to justice," Perez said.

Castano's apparently ambiguous attitude toward drug trafficking may have
contributed to a squabble among paramilitary forces earlier this year that
led to a fissure in the group, and prompted Castano to briefly retire. He
repeatedly said in recent news interviews that cocaine trafficking is to
blame for his nation's ills.