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Colombian Guerilla Leader
Extradited
A Colombian rebel suspected of
involvement in dozens of murders
and running a drugs for arms
operation has been extradited to
Colombia from Costa Rica, a
court spokeswoman in Costa Rica
said on Friday.
Hector Orlando Martinez,
believed to be a leader of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, was turned
over to Colombian authorities on
Thursday, four months after his
arrest in the Costa Rican port
town of Puntarenas.
Court spokeswoman Maria Isabel
Hernandez said Martinez was
handed over on the Colombian
island of San Andres, east of
Costa Rica.
Martinez, 38, is wanted by
Interpol and Colombian
authorities in connection with
the killings of dozens of police
and civilians in Colombia,
including the massacre of 47
police in 1999.
He is also suspected of
involvement in a 2002 mortar
attack on a church that killed
84 people including 46 children.
It was one of the deadliest
attacks in Colombia's
four-decade old guerrilla war.
Martinez had lived in Puntarenas
for several years and Interpol
suspects him of running a FARC
operation from there that used
drugs as a currency to buy
weapons.
The Marxist FARC, branded a
terrorist organization by the
U.S. government, is Colombia's
biggest guerrilla group.
It says it is fighting for a
socialist state that would close
Colombia's huge wealth gap. But
shootouts with far-right
paramilitaries kill thousands
each year as the groups battle
for control of Colombia's
lucrative cocaine trade.
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