Colombia will extradite rebel suspect to U.S.

May 8, 2003

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- For the first time, President Alvaro Uribe on Wednesday ordered a leftist Colombian rebel extradited to the United States. Nelson Vargas Rueda faces murder charges in the 1999 slaying of three American activists.

Vargas is one of six members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, indicted in April 2002 in federal court in Washington for the murders of Terence Freitas, 24, of Los Angeles, Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, of New York City and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, of Pahoa, Hawaii. Washinawatok was a Menominee Indian originally from Wisconsin.

They were in Colombia to help set up a school system for the 5,000-member U'wa Indian tribe.

FARC rebels kidnapped the three in February 1999 in northeastern Colombia, the indictment says. Days later, the kidnappers shot the victims. Their bullet-riddled bodies were found across the border in Venezuela.

Facing international outrage, the FARC admitted its fighters killed the Americans. They blamed a rogue lower-level commander and said he would be punished internally.

The murders prompted the United States to suspend all contact with the FARC, a leftist rebel group that has been fighting a series of elected governments in this South American nation for 38 years.

The United States considers the FARC an international terrorist organization and has provided Colombia with millions of dollars, mostly military aid, to fight the organization and other rebel groups. The State Department considers most of the country unsafe for Americans.