Word: colombia
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...killers chose their moment well. Attorney General Carlos Hoyos Jimenez had just spent the week in Medellin, drug capital of Colombia, investigating the suspicious release from jail of Cocaine Cowboy Jorge Ochoa Vasquez. Hoyos was headed for the airport to return to Bogota. Suddenly, three jeeps and a car forced Hoyos' Mercedes off the road. Several men jumped out and sprayed the Attorney General's car with machine-gun fire, apparently wounding Hoyos and instantly killing his bodyguard and driver. Hoyos, his head bowed and bloody, was dragged from the vehicle and kidnaped. Hours later his bullet-riddled body...
...Colombia's chief prosecutor thus became the latest victim in a vicious battle between the government and a group of billionaire drug traffickers known as the Medellin cartel. Hoyos had advocated the reinstatement of a 1979 extradition treaty with the U.S. that had resulted in the deportation of 16 alleged drug traffickers before Colombia's Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional last year...
...have been murdered. In the case of Ochoa, a leader of the Medellin cartel who is wanted in the U.S., Hoyos was investigating a group of officials, including two judges, who are suspected of accepting bribes to help Ochoa walk out of prison. "Who's in control in Colombia?" asks Ann Wrobleski, head of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters. "It seems to me a fair question...
Despite the climate of fear, Justice Minister Enrique Low Murtra believes that the extradition treaty might still be revived. But first, he said, the U.S. has to increase the aid it provides to help fight Colombia's drug mafia from the current $15 million a year, which he called a "drop in the bucket." Low's remarks reflect a growing anti-U.S. sentiment among Colombians, who blame the violence on the American demand for cocaine. (Colombian drug lords supply 75% of the coke consumed...
...When Colombia's anti-drug minister of justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, was assassinated by traffickers, Noriega allowed the cartel leaders to shift their operations to Panama to escape a crackdown in their own country...