Word: colombia
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...know the extent of the eruption, you really tend to overreact when you don't need to. We can also give practical information - telling people about ash flow or when a mudflow is coming down a river valley - that has really high stakes. In 1985, an entire town in Colombia, Armero, was obliterated and [about] 23,000 people were buried alive when a relatively small eruption melted snow and ice on a volcano and sent it rushing down this river valley. Scientists knew the eruption had occurred, but the communications process broke down. People in bed or watching a soccer...
...also unclear why some suspects earn a one-way ticket north while others stay put. In 2004 guerrilla commander Simón Trinidad was extradited and convicted of conspiracy to kidnap three U.S. military contractors, even though he was only loosely linked to the crime. But Colombia's Supreme Court this month blocked President Uribe's order to extradite Alexander Farfán, the cruel rebel prison warden who is accused by those same American hostages of putting chains around their necks and threatening to execute them. Farfán faces federal charges in the U.S. and Colombia for hostage...
...surprisingly, the political ABCs often trump purely judicial considerations. In the post-Escobar era, paramilitary commanders emerged as some of Colombia's most dangerous narco-criminals. By deftly holding the sword of extradition on drug charges over their heads, Uribe convinced dozens of these warlords to turn themselves in and demobilize their troops. Those who cooperated and confessed were eligible for light sentences. But soon these death-squad leaders began implicating political allies of the President, including lawmakers, army officers, the government's spy chief and even Uribe's cousin, who was forced to resign from the Senate...
...heyday of the Medellin and Cali cartels, motorcycle-mounted assassins shot down judges and witnesses while kingpins ran their drug empires from behind bars. Now Colombia has a modern maximum-security prison to lock down high-risk criminals. The judiciary, in turn, has switched from a written system to oral and accusatory trials similar to those in U.S. courts, making it harder for narcos to manipulate the proceedings. Still, many law-enforcement experts vigorously defend extradition as narco-traffickers now try to rig the system in more subtle ways. Last year, Guillermo Valencia Cossio, chief government prosecutor for Medell...
Housing world-class criminals for more than a few months can still test the limits of Colombia's prison system. Take the strange saga of Boss of Bosses Montoya, who headed the Northern Valley cartel. After he was arrested in 2007, Montoya presented such a security risk that prison officials decided to house him on a Navy ship off Colombia's Pacific Coast. But during his transfer there, clueless Colombian agents picked up the wrong prisoner, a paramilitary warlord known as Don Berna. After the confusion was cleared up, the two dons were eventually extradited...