DEA INDICTS 3 IN COCAINE SCHEME

The leaders of a right-wing paramilitary organization in Colombia were
indicted yesterday on charges of conspiring to smuggle 17 tons of cocaine
into the United States and Europe over the past five years. Top Stories

Attorney General John Ashcroft, at an afternoon press conference, said the
government would seek the extradition of Carlos Castano, leader of the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials AUC,
along with two of his top lieutenants, Salvatore Mancuso and Juan Carlos
Sierra-Ramirez.

The AUC is a Colombian paramilitary group listed by the State Department as
a terrorist organization.

"The indictment of these high-ranking AUC members marks, once again, the
convergence of two of the top priorities of the Department of Justice: the
prevention of terrorism and the reduction of illegal drug use," Mr.
Ashcroft said.

"As today's indictment reminds us, the lawlessness that breeds terrorism is
also a fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism," he
said. "To surrender to either of these threats is to surrender to both."

Castano, in a letter delivered yesterday to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota,
Colombia, said he would step down as AUC leader and defend himself against
the charges.

"I will make the necessary arrangements for my professional and family life
and proceed with the formalities of voluntarily handing myself over to
United States justice," he wrote. "I have never been involved in the wicked
business of drug trafficking, and I have been its natural enemy."

No timetable for his surrender was announced, but an AUC spokesman told
reporters Castano had told his troops farewell and was headed to the United
States. Headquartered in the mountains of northwest Colombia, Castano and
his two lieutenants face life in prison if convicted.

The five-count indictment, handed up in U.S. District Court in Washington,
follows by six months an indictment of several members of the left-wing
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC and also listed by
the State Department as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Ashcroft said the indictment showed the AUC leaders were not the
anti-FARC freedom fighters they claimed to be, but "violent drug
traffickers who poison our citizens and threaten our national security."

The AUC indictment is the culmination of a 30-month undercover
investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, working in
cooperation with the Justice Department, U.S. Customs Service and the U.S.
Coast Guard.

DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, who attended the press conference, said
it was the government's "expectation and intent" to see that Castano,
Mancuso and Sierra-Ramirez were arrested and extradited to the United
States, "as the law required."

"The drug trade operated by the leaders of the AUC provided the means to
equip an army of paramilitary terrorists with the necessary weapons, cash
and provisions," Mr. Hutchinson said.

"It is clear that the paramilitary organization led by Carlos Castano was
immersed for years in the illegal drug trade, from the taxing of the coca
growers to the processing laboratories to the transportation of cocaine to
the targeted country," he said.

Mr. Hutchinson called the indictment "the first step along many steps in
reducing the flow of cocaine coming into the United States."

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is visiting Washington this week. His
interior minister, Fernando Londono, said yesterday that Colombia would
immediately receive and analyze the formal extradition requests from the
U.S. government.

The indictment said Castano directed cocaine production and distribution
activities in AUC-controlled regions of Colombia, including protecting
coca-processing laboratories, setting quality and price controls for
cocaine, and arranging for and protecting cocaine shipments both within and
outside of Colombia.

It said Castano, Mancuso and Sierra-Ramirez used violence, force and
intimidation to maintain their authority over cocaine trafficking
activities - including kidnapping, threats and the murder of another
Colombian drug trafficker as retribution for failing to pay a drug debt.