Editor’s Release Tied to Lehder

A caller to a radio station today said Colombia’s drug barons are prepared to release a kidnaped newspaper editor if the United States frees convicted drug trafficker Carlos Lehder Rivas and returns him to Colombia.

Radio Todelar said the man who called the station said, “We are the extraditables,” a reference to the international drug traffickers in Colombia whom the United States has sought to extradite. The man said he and his associates kidnaped editor and Conservative Party leader Alvaro Gomez Hurtado Sunday in Bogota. Another caller to the radio station said Monday that Gomez Hurtado had died from wounds sustained during his abduction.