Under New Law, First Suspect Is Extradited

The suspected head of a heroin smuggling mob was bundled aboard a U.S. plane in Bogota amid tight security, becoming the first Colombian extradited to stand trial in the United States in nine years. The hand-over of 30-year-old Jaime Orlando Lara Nausa to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration came 10 days after a deadly terrorist bomb exploded in Bogota, the capital, in what many suspected was a warning against extraditions. President Andres Pastrana defiantly signed Lara Nausa’s extradition papers just hours after the Nov. 11 explosion, which killed eight bystanders in an upscale shopping district. Colombia banned extradition in 1991, capitulating to a wave of bombings and assassinations by the now-defunct Medellin drug cartel. Under pressure from Washington, Colombia reinstated extradition in December 1997. Lara Nausa is the first Colombian sent abroad since the reinstatement.