Colombia nabs its top drug kingpin

Colombian police captured the country's most powerful drug lord, a former paramilitary with a 2.1 million dollar bounty on his head who controlled a vast private army.

Daniel Rendon, known as "Don Mario," is alleged to have controlled the flow of drugs and weapons through the jungles of northern Colombia into Panama in association with leftist FARC guerrillas.

President Alvaro Uribe, who was in Brazil for an economic conference, hailed the arrest of "one of the most feared drug traffickers in the world."

Rendon, 43, led a 1,500-strong private army composed mainly of former members of a disbanded, right-wing paramilitary death squad, the Self Defense Units of Colombia AUC.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Rendon would be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted for trafficking a tonne of cocaine into the country.

Rendon was captured near the town of Necocli, in the northwestern department of Antioquia, whose capital Medellin has long been a key center of the Colombian drug trade and was believed to be the base of Rendon's operations.

Police indicated the operation was set in motion by the arrest on April 6 of 18 members of Rendon's organization, including a man close to the drug lord.

"His capture was a relief," Uribe told reporters in Rio de Janeiro, adding he had kept a tense vigil through the Easter holidays in anticipation of the arrest. "It was a very patient operation that took a long time.

"Day by day Colombia is freeing itself from these criminals. This success is an incentive to make other captures," Uribe said.

Police also alleged that Rendon was an ally of top Mexican cartels, and had exported vast quantities of drugs across Latin America.

Intelligence sources told AFP that Uribe ordered Rendon's arrest be given top priority because of his alleged ties to the Revolutionnary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC, with whom he had allegedly traded drugs for weapons.

The arrest followed a wave of violence between rival drug gangs in Medellin that left 31 people dead last week and prompted the deployment of 500 army troops and 6,800 police into the slums surrounding the country's second largest city.

Antioquia Governor Luis Alfredo Ramos expressed hope that the capture would lead to an easing of violence in the city.

"Anything that reduces these groups of outlaws and these clashes will help immensely," he said.

Rendon was moved under tight security from Medellin to Bogota following his capture.

A source with the general prosecutor's office said there were eight charges outstanding against Rendon for drug trafficking and for his role as the second-in-command of the AUC's Elmer Cardenas bloc.

The bloc's leader was Rendon's brother, Freddy, who disbanded the group two years ago as part of a peace deal with the government that led to the demobilization of some 32,000 members of right-wing paramilitary groups.

The Colombian newsweekly Semana said Rendon had been trying to open negotiations with US anti-drug authorities, and had traveled to Panama in August for that purpose.



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