Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Slain man ID'd as head of cartel

Drug lord Wilber Varela was found dead in Venezuela.

CARACAS, Venezuela - One of Colombia's most-wanted drug lords has been found slain in Venezuela, a top counter-drug official said Friday.

Fingerprints of the man found shot to death in the Venezuelan city of Merida on Wednesday matched those of Wilber Varela, said Col. Nestor Reverol, head of the National Anti-Drug Agency.

Varela was indicted in U.S. federal courts on drug trafficking charges in 2004, and the State Department offered a reward of up to $5-million for his capture.

Varela, alias "Jabon," or "Soap," led a war with rival traffickers that killed more than 1,000 people in recent years, and the underworld is awash with tales of brutality that made him a household name in Colombia.

"Wilber Varela in the last few years was truly the main leader of Colombian drug-trafficking organizations," Colombia's police chief, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, said in Bogota. He said Varela, a former police officer, had entered the drug underworld as a hired killer.

Varela had a private army along the western coast of Colombia that protected cocaine routes.

Varela and another man were found shot to death in a cabin at an Andean tourist resort where they were staying, Reverol said.

Officials did not discuss who might have been behind Varela's killing, but Naranjo suggested that competing traffickers might have planned it.

[Last modified February 2, 2008, 01:45:45]