From NY Times:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales unveiled today an indictment against 50 leaders in Colombia's largest rebel group, charging them with sending more than $25 billion worth of cocaine into the United States and other countries.
The 54-page federal indictment, which names 50 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is the largest narcotics trafficking indictment ever filed in United States history, Mr. Gonzales said in a news briefing in Washington.
It accuses them of being part of a large-scale cocaine trafficking organization and of other crimes, including the murder and kidnapping of Colombian and American citizens.
"We believe these men are responsible for not only manufacturing and exporting devastating amounts of cocaine, but enforcing their criminal regime with violence," Mr. Gonzales said.
The individuals named in the indictment have been responsible for overseeing the production of more than 60 percent of the cocaine imported into the United States, Mr. Gonzales said. Three of them are already in custody in Colombia and extradition proceedings have been started, he added.
But the remaining 47 are at large, "hiding in the remote reaches of Colombia, surrounded by heavily armed FARC loyalists," Mr. Gonzales said.
It was not immediately clear how the United States would bring the remaining FARC leaders to justice under the indictment, which Mr. Gonzales called the beginning of a "process".
With so many of the suspects at large, the indictment appeared to be more of a statement of intent to act against a group that the State Department has called a terrorist organization.
The State Department today said that it was offering more than $75 million in rewards leading to the capture of fugitive FARC leaders, and Mr. Gonzales said there might be American action "in concert with" the Colombian government.
"I think that members of the FARC do not want to face American justice," he said.
Mr. Gonzales declined to comment on specific actions that the United States was considering or whether the indictment could open the way for American troops to help in the search for the FARC leaders. He said there were "effective options" and "they all remain on the table."
Some of the accusations in the indictment might be hard to prove. It links some of the group's leaders to decisions and actions that took place in the 1980's, when the FARC was not yet involved as heavily in the cocaine trade as it is now.
The indictment also offered a glimpse into the details of how the rebel group operated. It alleged that some members, in addition to manufacturing and trafficking the cocaine and paste, also murdered farm workers who did not comply with the group's rules by shooting, stabbing and dismembering them.
Corpses were filled with rocks to make them sink in nearby rivers, it said.
The FARC, the indictment says, controls approximately 70 percent of the coca grown in Colombia, which produces about 80 percent of the world supply of cocaine and about 90 percent of the cocaine that is imported into the United States.
The FARC leadership is accused of issuing instructions to murder farm workers if they sold cocaine paste to purchasers other than the group, to shoot down airplanes involved in eradication efforts, and to encourage the kidnapping of American citizens to deter the United States from supporting anti-drug missions.
"The FARC's fingerprint is on most of the cocaine that's sold in American neighborhoods," said Karen P. Tandy, administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
"Americans are responsible for giving the FARC their life blood to the amount of $25 billion for 2,500 metric tons of cocaine," she said.
Ms. Tandy said the indictment "decimates" the entire leadership of the FARC.
"This brings to a complete chapter the entire FARC leadership and its cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to do so in the United States," she said.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on March 1 and unsealed today, details the hierarchy of the group. The Secretariat, the indictment notes, is Pedro Antonio Marin, also known as Manuel Marulanda Velez, who has been fighting against the state since the 1950's and several years ago participated with other FARC commanders in peace talks.
In May, 1999, when Mr. Marulanda sat down with then President Andres Pastrana, it was the first meeting between a sitting Colombian President and a FARC leader since the Marxist rebels launched their insurgency in 1964.
He is still at large.
New York state and city police forces, along with other law enforcement agencies, assisted in the investigation, along with the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
The office of the United States attorney in Manhattan, Michael Garcia, oversaw a team of prosecutors that led to the indictment on narcotics conspiracy charges of a Colombian right-wing paramilitary leader, Diego Fernando Murillo.
