Arrests Called Blow to Colombia Cocaine Ring

U.S. and Colombian authorities hauled into custody Wednesday “a who’s who of drug traffickers operating in Colombia,” busting up a powerful consortium blamed for flooding the streets of the United States with up to $60 billion worth of cocaine a year.

Among 30 alleged traffickers who were indicted in Miami and arrested in the predawn hours in Colombia were Alejandro Bernal-Madrigal, the reputed boss of one of the world’s biggest cocaine distribution rings, and Fabio Ochoa, once a leader of the now-defunct Medellin cartel.

Bernal-Madrigal is thought to be the mastermind behind a sophisticated network that has exported unprecedented levels of cocaine--as much as 30 tons a month--into the United States via his extensive Mexican contacts, U.S. officials said in announcing his arrest.

Known as “Juvenal,” or “the youngster,” the 40-year-old Bernal-Madrigal was taken into custody in Bogota, the capital, about 5 a.m. at a birthday party, authorities said. Ochoa, 42, a friend and mentor to Bernal-Madrigal, was arrested separately at his ranch in Medellin. Witnesses said he appeared pale and frightened, declaring: “I am innocent, I swear it on my children.”

Officials in Washington and Bogota hailed the bust as the most dramatic example to date of their redoubled cooperation in the drug war, and they promised to seek the suspects’ swift extradition to the United States for prosecution on drug conspiracy charges.

“All of them are extraditable, all of them,” National Police Commander Rosso Jose Serrano told reporters at a news conference in Bogota.

The arrests come at a time when U.S. officials have become increasingly worried about a recent explosion of cocaine cultivation in Colombia, which produces about 70% of the cocaine consumed in the United States and a growing share of the heroin.

The United States has tripled its anti-narcotics aid to Colombia since 1997, providing $289 million this year, but Colombian officials say it may not be enough. Colombian President Andres Pastrana visited Washington last month to ask for $1.5 billion over three years, then sent his top military officials last week to reinforce the request.

Colombia has failed so far to extradite any narcotics suspects, despite a 2-year-old law permitting extradition, and that has created a sore spot in the otherwise improving relationship between the two nations.

Authorities said that Bernal-Madrigal and his cohorts maintained a lower profile than some of the infamous cartel leaders who preceded them. And they reportedly used sophisticated electronic methods to avoid detection, including encrypted and cloned cell phones and Internet communications to maintain trafficking contacts in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.

Such methods helped Bernal-Madrigal’s consortium move startling volumes of cocaine, exceeding the amount once believed by American officials to have been imported into the U.S. by all cocaine traffickers combined, according to one senior law enforcement official.

During a one-year investigation, dubbed Operation Millennium, U.S. and Colombian officials intercepted communications among the traffickers and cut off several valuable shipments en route to the United States, authorities said. Among the interdictions was one of the biggest seizures in U.S. Coast Guard history--11.5 tons of cocaine taken from a 146-foot Mexican fishing vessel two months ago in international waters in the eastern Pacific.

Although the immediate impact on U.S. cocaine prices is tough to gauge, the arrests should make a significant dent in drug supplies, said Thomas J. Umberg, deputy director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“Smashing the Juvenal organization is a major victory for American children,” Umberg said in an interview. “It will make it more difficult to get cocaine. There’ll be a direct impact.”

U.S. prosecutors in Miami indicted 43 people who are alleged to be affiliated with the trafficking network. In addition to Bernal-Madrigal and Ochoa, 28 others were arrested in Colombia, and one man was apprehended in Mexico.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials said that one indictee who is still being sought is Mexican national Armando Valencia, who allegedly served as Bernal-Madrigal’s main transporter through Mexico. U.S. officials say that Valencia filled the void left by the 1997 death of Mexican-based drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

“These defendants indicted today are really a who’s who of drug traffickers operating in Colombia. By this indictment, we have set up the possibility to take out the heads and leaders of a consortium of drug networks,” said Thomas E. Scott, the U.S. attorney in Miami.

*

Lichtblau reported from Washington and Darling from San Salvador. Special correspondent Margarita Martinez in Bogota contributed to this report.