LATIN AMERICA : Light Sentences for Colombian Drug Traffickers Worry U.S.

Several of the world’s top drug traffickers have finalized plea bargaining agreements allowing them to serve fewer than 10 years in jail, according to Colombian officials. The sentences stand in stark contrast to the life terms that they would likely receive if tried in U.S. courts.

U.S. officials are deeply concerned about the negotiations, which affect, among others, three brothers who allegedly helped found the so-called Medellin cocaine cartel. The officials note that other major traffickers such as Carlos Lehder, another cartel founder, are currently serving life sentences in U.S. maximum security prisons.

In 1991, Colombia passed a new constitution that forbids extradition of the country’s citizens for trial abroad. Instead, authorities must rely on a combination of police pressure, promises of leniency and plea bargaining arrangements to persuade traffickers to surrender here and confess their crimes.

Colombia’s deputy prosecutor general, Francisco Jose Sintura, told The Times this week that after three months of negotiations, he had completed sentencing agreements with the lawyers of Fabio, Jorge Luis and Juan David Ochoa. The three multimillionaire brothers are accused of helping Pablo Escobar supply most of the American cocaine market during the 1980s.

Sintura would not discuss details of the agreements, to be announced in early February. He said only that each brother would receive a sentence of between 17 and 24 years.

The country’s penal code dictates halved sentences for suspects like the Ochoas who cooperate with authorities by surrendering and confessing at least one crime. Additional reductions are given to suspects who inform on accomplices, surrender ill-gotten gains and work in jail.

The resulting plunge in actual time spent behind bars was demonstrated dramatically this week in the case of another major drug figure, Ivan Urdinola. At the time of his capture last April, police were accusing Urdinola of ordering the killings of scores of people, moving to take control of Colombia’s growing heroin business and trafficking in cocaine.

Sintura said that evidence linking Urdinola to several murders was so weak that prosecutors could not charge him in the cases. Murder in Colombia carries a maximum sentence of 30 years, six years more than the maximum for drug trafficking. Under the plea bargain, Urdinola confessed to trafficking and several related crimes, surrendered more than $1 million worth of cash, gold and vehicles and informed on an accomplice who subsequently surrendered.

In return, the prosecutor’s office agreed to give Urdinola a 17.5-year sentence, affirmed Monday by one of the country’s criminal judges. But officials admit that after the numerous reductions, the convicted trafficker is likely to serve no more than four to seven years in jail.

That possibility has U.S. officials questioning whether Colombian authorities are conceding too much to criminals under the new plea bargaining system, put in place last July.

“Urdinola is responsible for dozens if not hundreds of murders,” said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Robert C. Bonner in a telephone interview, adding that the suspect is among the top 12 traffickers in the world. “If he only serves five or six or seven years of (his sentence), it will be disappointing because that’s not commensurate with the magnitude of his crimes.”

Urdinola’s is likely to become the first of a series of relatively light sentences for Colombian drug bosses. For example, even if prosecutors give Fabio Ochoa the maximum 24-year sentence for trafficking, he could reduce his actual time behind bars by 74% to just over six years by taking advantage of the same reductions that Urdinola received.

Since Ochoa has already spent two years behind bars, he would be out of jail in 1997.