Colombians Debate Corruption of Justice : Drugs: Light sentences in cushy jails for cocaine traffickers bring calls for revamping the judicial system, even extradition.

Its role in the world drug war under increasing scrutiny, Colombia is caught up in a debate over revamping a corrupt judicial system that routinely gives light sentences and cushy jail conditions to vicious cocaine traffickers.

Some prominent Colombians are so appalled at new reports of judicial misbehavior that they have begun to advocate the one thing drug traffickers fear most but that has been a taboo topic here: extradition.

Former and current officials say they are outraged that drug traffickers continue to run their businesses, plan assassinations and live in luxury in jail.

“The judicial system is in one of its worst crises,” said Enrique Parejo, a former justice minister who supports extradition. “Dirty money has corrupted consciences and generated tolerance among politicians and the government toward drug traffickers.”

The judicial system’s troubles are a major obstacle in Colombia’s effort to change its image as the world’s biggest supplier of cocaine and a major supplier of heroin.

The debate comes as the Clinton Administration considers whether to certify to Congress that Colombia is doing everything it can to reduce drug exports.

If Colombia is unable to persuade Washington of good intentions before next Wednesday’s deadline, it could lose aid money, its preferential trading status and the U.S. vote in important international lending institutions.

Colombia’s status was further jeopardized by news last year that drug traffickers tried to channel millions of dollars into the election campaign of President Ernesto Samper. Samper, who took office in August, has denied taking the money, but many in Washington remain suspicious.

Members of Samper’s government insist that they have purged corrupt police and intelligence operatives and are committed to eliminating all of the nation’s coca leaves and heroin-producing poppies within two years. They have vowed to take measures to avoid lenient sentences for drug traffickers.

But Colombia’s persistent inability to jail its worst criminals continues to raise doubts here and in the United States.

In a report released last month, Colombia’s Justice Ministry found that widespread impunity has been allowed to exist and grow under a plea-bargaining system designed in 1990 to entice violent Medellin drug traffickers to surrender.

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The policy, widely criticized by U.S. officials, provides generous reductions in sentences in exchange for confessions and cooperation. It was followed a year later by a Constitutional Assembly banning extradition, and Colombia’s extradition treaty with the United States was canceled.

Drug traffickers oppose extradition because they fear tough jail sentences in the United States. A secretly made videotape taken when the Constitutional Assembly was debating the matter suggested that many members of the assembly had been bribed. And some of Colombia’s most violent traffickers had begun calling themselves “The Extraditables” and carrying out bombings and other acts of terrorism to pressure officials.

Since the ending of extradition and the use of the plea-bargaining policy, miscarriages of justice have become routine.

Today, according to the report, confessed drug traffickers are receiving an average of three years in prison in exchange for providing information that often proves useless to authorities.

Critics say fear, corruption and misinterpretation of legal norms hinder and weaken judicial authorities. The relationships between these authorities and defendants, the critics say, have become unsavory.

A top prosecutor in Bogota was filmed recently eating a box lunch and chatting amiably with an imprisoned assassin for the Medellin cartel. The cartel member had confessed to more than 100 murders. But the prosecutor, a former classmate, ended up recommending a sentence of 8 1/2 years.

“In the immense majority of cases, drug traffickers confess to only minor crimes and receive reductions that eliminate two-thirds of the sentence,” said Miguel Maza Marquez, the former head of Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI. “That has had a devastating effect on the credibility of the justice system.”

Similar embarrassments could arise in the future.

In November, 1993, lawyers for the Cali cartel--now believed to control 80% of the world’s cocaine supplies--lobbied heavily in Colombia’s Congress for reforms of the nation’s penal code.

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With judicial authorities proposing the minimum sentences and awarding the maximum reductions, Cali cartel chief Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela could receive less than three years in prison if he surrenders.

The practice of mixing millionaire drug traffickers with underpaid guards, meanwhile, is corroding the prison system.

Run-of-the-mill Colombian criminals live in overcrowded, often inhumane conditions.

Drug traffickers at Bogota’s La Picota prison, on the other hand, can get virtually anything they want.

Trucks arrive with posh meals for them every week. There are microwave ovens, blenders and televisions in their cells. Guards treat them like royalty, supplying them with everything from alcohol to cellular telephones so they can continue drug trafficking in prison.

In December, a former member of the Medellin cartel was discovered plotting the assassination of Alfonso Valdivieso, the nation’s prosecutor general, in coordination with prisoners from several other jails. There were escapes at three prisons last month.

Colombia’s security council responded by proposing to send drug traffickers once again to the remote Pacific island of Gorgona, converted since 1985 into one of Colombia’s treasured national parks.

“The only guards that can’t be corrupted are sharks,” the national prison chief, Col. Norberto Pelaez, said in an interview with the weekly newsmagazine Cambio 16.

Asked by reporters about the possibility of reinstituting extradition, Valdivieso said: “I don’t want to revive that kind of debate, but neither do I want the situation of Colombian justice to remain practically in limbo.”

Valdivieso has overturned some lenient sentences negotiated with drug traffickers and is studying ways to remove the justice system’s worst abuses. But no legislation is in the works.