Extradited Colombian to Face Charges of Drug Trafficking

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/nyregion/extradited-colombian-to-face-charges-of-drug-trafficking.html

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A Colombian who has been described by his country’s president as “the last of the great kingpins” was extradited to the United States from Colombia on Tuesday to face charges that he manufactured large quantities of cocaine that he then trafficked to the United States and elsewhere.

The Colombian, Daniel Barrera, is to be arraigned in the federal district courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn on Wednesday and Thursday, where he faces separate indictments. After those prosecutions, he will be arraigned in Miami on additional charges, the authorities said.

Mr. Barrera, also known as El Loco, was arrested in September in Venezuela as a result of a complex operation that included the Colombian and Venezuelan authorities, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the British intelligence.

He was later sent to Colombia, and his extradition was announced by the United States attorneys in the three jurisdictions and other officials, including Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner of New York; and Michele M. Leonhart, the head of the D.E.A.

An indictment in Manhattan says that Mr. Barrera relied on two Colombian terrorist organizations to carry out his operations, buying raw cocaine paste from members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and processing it in laboratories in areas controlled by another group, to which he paid fees.

Mr. Barrera’s organization produced upward of 400 tons of cocaine a year, “enriching itself and the two terrorist organizations it paid off,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said Mr. Barrera’s organization was “marked by its worldwide reach, ruthless criminality and staggering profits.”

Mr. Barrera is charged in Manhattan with one count of narcotics importation conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He faces a money laundering conspiracy charge in Brooklyn. His lawyer declined to comment.

Officials have said that Mr. Barrera, while residing in Venezuela, changed his appearance through plastic surgery, slept in different places and burned his fingertips to try to make it impossible to identify him.