Colombia to extradite rebel for killing Americans

Reuters-Alertnet 23 Apr 2003 17:39:28 GMT By Jason Webb

BOGOTA, Colombia, April 23 (Reuters) - Colombia will extradite a Marxist guerrilla to the United States to face charges for the murder of three American native Indian rights activists in 1999, the Supreme Court confirmed on Wednesday.

Nelson Vargas Rueda, alias "the Pig", will be the first member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to be extradited from Colombia to the United States, where he was one of several rebels indicted last year for killing the activists.

"The Supreme Court has responded favorably to the request by the United States for the extradition of the Colombian citizen Nelson Vargas Rueda .... for the crimes of extortive kidnapping and homicide," Supreme Court Judge Yesid Ramirez told a news conference.

Vargas Rueda, a low-ranking guerrilla in the Marxist band known by the Spanish initials FARC who was captured late last year, also faces the lesser charge in Colombia of being a rebel, but could be extradited before he serves time here.

The three Americans were helping U'Wa Indians keep oil prospectors off their land in the wild eastern province of Arauca when they were captured by the rebels in February 1999.

The guerrillas accused Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahee'Enae Gay of being CIA agents. After holding them for eight days, the rebels tied them up with nylon rope and blindfolded them, then shot them and dumped their bodies across the river separating Colombia from Venezuela.

The incident caused the United States to withdraw its help for peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC, which eventually collapsed early last year.

The rebels admitted they had made a mistake, but only sentenced those guerrillas involved to the token punishment of learning to read and write.

If sent to prison, Vargas Rueda will join one other alleged FARC member behind U.S. bars. Carlos Bolas was extradited from Suriname last year on drug trafficking charges.

Extradition to the United States has up until now mainly been used against Colombian drug traffickers. While new top security prisons have been built in Colombia in recent years, many jails are still places of violent anarchy where powerful inmates can buy favors or even escape.

But other guerrillas wanted by the United States, including top commanders and German Briceno, who allegedly ordered the activists' killing, are still on the run. They are among an estimated 20,000 FARC rebels waging a four-decade-old war for socialist reform that claims thousands of lives a year.

The FARC took three U.S. civilian Defense Department contractors prisoner in February, secreting them away despite a massive search-and-rescue operation after their light plane crashed on a mission to spy out drug crops.

Washington brands the FARC "terrorists" and recently lifted restrictions which had limited the Colombian military to using hundreds of millions of dollars of annual aid against drug smugglers so that they could directly target rebels and far-right paramilitaries.