Colombia Passing the Extradition Test

By Michael S. Serrill

The operation went off with military precision. At about 6 p.m. Wednesday, officers from the Dijin, a police special-operations team, hustled Eduardo Martinez Romero out the back door of a maximum-security Bogota jail while other officers distracted reporters and photographers gathered in front. Martinez, wanted in Atlanta in connection with a $1.2 billion money-laundering scheme, was taken aboard a jet owned by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and flown to his long-postponed rendezvous with U.S. justice.

With the extradition of Martinez, President Virgilio Barco Vargas proved his resolve in the battle against Colombia's drug traffickers. Barco vowed to drive the dealers out of his country after the Aug. 18 murder of Senator Luis Carlos Galan, one of Colombia's leading presidential candidates. Martinez, 34, a reputed money manager for the Medellin cocaine cartel, was the first victim of Barco's executive order reviving a U.S.-Colombia extradition treaty invalidated by the Colombian Supreme Court in 1987.

Martinez was hustled to the federal courthouse in Atlanta early Thursday, where at a preliminary hearing U.S. Magistrate Joel M. Feldman read a thick list of charges accusing him of laundering millions of dollars for the cartel. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 30 years in prison. In Washington officials were exultant. "I applaud the extraordinary courage of President Virgilio Barco and the government of Colombia in their effort to restore the rule of law," said Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.

But in Colombia others paid a high price for Barco's boldness. Luz Amparo Gomez, 29, a former investigator for the attorney general's office who was involved in a legal action against drug kingpin Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, was driving to her home when gunmen shot her to death. Hours later, the wife of a police major was gunned down outside her home. A day earlier, the wife of an intelligence officer attached to the 13th Brigade, the army unit that has spearheaded the crackdown, was murdered.

For the moment, the authorities are undaunted. At midweek Colombian television began running 30-second commercials featuring mug shots of Rodriguez Gacha and Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar Gaviria, and offering 100 million pesos -- about $250,000 -- for information leading to their arrest.

Some American officials were still questioning whether Barco will follow through with new deportations in the face of both popular opposition and the terror campaign by the narcotraficantes. "As the cartel continues putting bombs here and there and appeals to nationalism," said one State Department official in Washington, "Colombians are going to start asking, 'Why are we getting blown up just to satisfy the gringos?' "

But U.S. officials have concluded that the harsh Colombian campaign, for the moment at least, is having a real effect on the supply of cocaine in the U.S. "The cartels are having trouble getting cocaine out of Colombia," said Pat O'Brien, outgoing chief of U.S. Customs in Miami. The government has seized so many of the traffickers' planes and helicopters that they may be having difficulty moving the powder to Colombia's northern coast, the main shipment point for cocaine. And on the drug-hungry streets of the U.S., the price of cocaine is skyrocketing.

With reporting by John Moody/Bogota and Don Winbush/Atlanta