Drug kingpin has U.S. court date Monday

MIAMI - A founder of a Colombian drug cartel that became the world's chief supplier of cocaine in the 1990s was transported to a Miami jail Saturday after being extradited from Colombia.

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 65, landed before dawn in a U.S. government plane and was driven to the downtown jail. His first court appearance is set for Monday.

Rodriguez Orejuela is charged, along with his brother, Miguel, with running a drug network responsible for producing 80 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply in the 1990s. The brothers have been jailed in Colombia for nearly a decade.

Eleven others face charges in the conspiracy, but Rodriguez Orejuela is the first defendant to be extradited to the United States. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Michael J. Garcia, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Rodriguez Orejuela will be "arguably the highest-level drug trafficking figure to ever occupy a U.S. prison cell."

The cartel became renowned for its ingenious methods of hiding tons of cocaine in everything from hollow lumber and concrete fence posts to chlorine cylinders, frozen broccoli and okra. Investigators believe a 15-ton seizure of cocaine-stuffed fence posts in Miami in 1991 followed more than 20 similar shipments that passed through undetected.

Prosecutors said Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela was the brains behind the concealment techniques, while Gilberto, nicknamed "The Chess Player," ran the family's financial empire, which included 400 discount drugstores in Colombia and a fence-post plant and lumber mill.

The brothers were arrested in Colombia in 1995 but continued to control the cartel from jail, prosecutors allege.

Top American and Colombian authorities hailed the extradition.

"Every day judicial cooperation between our two countries is becoming more effective and more visible," Col. Oscar Naranjo, chief of Colombia's Judicial Police, told the Associated Press. "This means that the criminals will not find any sanctuary to evade justice."

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said,"Those who violate federal drug laws should never believe that drug trafficking from outside our borders puts them beyond the reach of justice. ... Rodriguez Orejuela will now stand trial for his actions."

Previous drug traffickers who have been extradited to the United States include former Medellin cartel leaders Fabio Ochoa, who in 2003 was sentenced in Miami to more than 30 years in prison for returning to the drug trade after winning amnesty at home; and Carlos Lehder, who was sentenced in 1988 to life without parole.

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