Colombia Bars Extradition of Cocaine Suspect

President Virgilio Barco Vargas said Tuesday that an accused major cocaine trafficker, Jorge Ochoa Vasquez, will serve 20 months in prison in Colombia for illegally importing fighting bulls and will not be extradited to the United States to face drug charges.

Barco said on national television that the United States had submitted documents asking for his extradition but that Colombia no longer has a law giving the government the authority to send him there.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota said it sent the Colombian government a petition for the extradition of Ochoa on cocaine smuggling charges filed in Puerto Rico in 1977 and in Miami in 1984.

Barco’s announcement appears to close the door on the possible extradition of Ochoa, allegedly one of the leaders of the powerful Medellin cocaine cartel, which U.S. officials say controls 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States.

The cocaine cartel’s reputed leader, Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, was captured in Colombia in February and extradited to the United States, where he is on trial in Jacksonville, Fla., on cocaine smuggling charges. The treaty that allowed Lehder to be extradited has since been overturned by a Colombian court on a technicality.

When Ochoa was tried in Cartagena customs court last year on the fighting-bull charge, the judge fined him $11,000 and sentenced him to 20 months in prison, then set him free on probation.

Ochoa was supposed to report to authorities every 15 days, but dropped out of sight. The Justice Ministry fired the customs judge.

Ochoa was arrested Saturday when he was stopped for a speeding through a toll booth without paying.

The Bogota newspaper El Tiempo reported Tuesday that Ochoa offered a $400,000 bribe to police who arrested him.