COLOMBIAN GUERRILLA LEADER SENT TO U.S. TO FACE CHARGES

A top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was sent to the
United States yesterday to face murder and conspiracy charges in a massive
cocaine smuggling operation that routed tons of the illicit drug each year
to this country, authorities said.

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson said Marxist guerrilla
leader Carlos Bolas was transported by DEA agents to the United States from
Suriname, where he had been arrested on immigration charges after
attempting to travel in that country on a false Peruvian passport.

"This arrest takes our fight against narco-terrorism to a new level," Mr.
Hutchinson said in a statement. "For the first time, we have not only
indicted a member of a terrorist organization involved in drug trafficking,
but we have also arrested him.

"This means that narco-terrorists will be held accountable to the justice
system and to the rule of law in both the United States and Colombia," he said.

DEA agents took Bolas into custody on Tuesday after he appeared before a
magistrate in Suriname.

Knowing he was wanted in the United States in a pending indictment,
Surinamese authorities ordered him expelled and immediately turned him over
to the DEA.

Bolas had been taken into custody by Surinamese police without incident,
although they said they found two handguns, a satellite telephone and a
Global Positioning System device in his apartment.

In March, Bolas was one of three major leaders of the Colombian guerrilla
organization -- known by its Spanish acronym, FARC -- indicted by a federal
grand jury in a drug-trafficking operation that Attorney General John
Ashcroft said had helped fuel terrorist activities in Colombia and
elsewhere. The FARC rebels also were accused of murder in the deaths of
three Americans kidnapped while working with Indians in northeastern Colombia.

The three slain Americans were Terence Freitas, 24; Ingrid Washinawatok,
41; and Lahee'Enae Gay, 39. They were kidnapped by FARC guerrillas Feb. 25,
1999, and killed March 4, 1999.

The indictment said the FARC targeted the three Americans, conducted
surveillance of their activities, abducted them at gunpoint and killed them
"with multiple gunshots to the head and body."

The three Americans were helping set up a school system at the time of
their deaths.

The indictment -- the first to name members of the rebel organization --
was handed up in U.S. District Court in Washington and also named Bolas,
Tomas Molinas Caracas and a rebel known only as Oscar El Negro on charges
of conspiring to send cocaine to the United States.

The FARC leaders were charged with conspiracy to import cocaine into this
country and to manufacture and distribute cocaine in Colombia with the
intent of exporting it to the United States. Molinas and El Negro are
fugitives.

Mr. Hutchinson said the cocaine was bound for the United States, Suriname,
Paraguay, Mexico and Spain and that illicit profits from its sale were
being used, in part, to acquire weapons, cash and equipment for the FARC.

The indictment said the cocaine conspiracy began in 1994 and was centered
in Barranco Minas, Colombia.

The Justice Department had requested the Colombian government to arrest the
three men and extradite them to the United States.

The Bush administration has sought to increase military aid to Colombia in
its ongoing fight against the FARC. Up to now, that assistance has been
restricted to the war on narcotics.

The FARC is on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist
organizations. The department has long considered the FARC the most
dangerous terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere. Since 1980, the
guerrilla group has murdered 13 Americans and kidnapped more than 100 others.

The FARC controls large areas of eastern and southern Colombia, the primary
coca-cultivation and cocaine-processing regions in the country.

Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party,
FARC has between 9,000 and 12,000 armed Marxist insurgents. It has been
involved in bombings, murders, kidnappings, extortion and hijackings.

The Washington indictments were the result of an 18-month investigation of
FARC narcotics trafficking by the DEA, working with the Justice
Department's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section and Colombian
law-enforcement authorities.