Colombian drug lord Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia was extradited to the United States on Friday to face racketeering charges, a year after he was captured in a luxurious hide-out on the outskirts of South America's largest city.
Ramirez Abadia was flown before dawn from a prison in central Brazil to the Amazon region jungle city of Manaus, where he was handed over to agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, said Romeu Tuma Jr., a high-ranking Justice Ministry official.
Tuma said that Abadia was being flown to New York City in a U.S. government plane.
Tuma said the extradition was not revealed earlier "for obvious security reasons."
The remote maximum security prison where Ramirez Abadia was staying was attacked earlier this year by armed gunmen apparently trying to free him and Brazilian drug lord Luiz Fernando da Costa.Prison officials said earlier this month that they foiled a plot to stage another attack on the prison as well as a wave of kidnappings to terrorize judicial officials.Ramirez Abadia has acknowledged trafficking cocaine and prosecutors say his Norte de Valle cartel shipped 500 metric tons (550 tons) of cocaine to the United States from 1990 to 2003.Abadia radically altered his facial appearance with repeated plastic surgeries in an attempt to avoid capture in Brazil. But his own words gave him away, thanks to advanced voice recognition technology that has become a key tool in the war against drugs and terrorism.U.S. agents last year managed to confirm his identify by using the equivalent of a vocal fingerprint, according to Sergio Alambert, who served as Ramirez Abadia's lawyer immediately after his arrest.Brazilian police had closed in on Ramirez Abadia's properties in and around Sao Paulo, and were probing his alleged laundering of the Colombian cartel's drug profits. But because of his surgeries and multiple aliases, they lacked the positive identification needed for an arrest warrant.They got their break by taping his telephone conversations, the lawyer said. Colombian officials provided a recording they had of Ramirez Abadia, and both sets of recordings were passed to the DEA, which made the match.Police then swooped in on 22 locations in six Brazilian states, catching Ramirez Abadia in a luxurious home with a gym, sauna, plasma TVs, a swimming pool and nearly US$1 million in stashed cash.Tuma said U.S. officials promised not to seek the death penalty for Ramirez Abadia — a pledge Brazil requires before it sends accused criminals to other nations.
Ramirez Abadia — nicknamed "Lollypop" — told authorities last year he wanted to be quickly extradited to the United States so he could avoid having to first serve a 30-year Brazilian sentence for money laundering, gang formation and corruption. But Tuma said Ramirez Abadia later withdrew the request.
American officials sought Ramirez Abadia's extradition under a 2004 racketeering indictment issued by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., that could bring a lengthy sentence.The U.S. indictment accuses Ramirez Abadia and other gang members of routinely killing rivals and customers who failed to pay for drugs. He also was accused of killing a gang member he suspected was an informant for the DEA.
Ramirez Abadia fled to Brazil four years ago after a drug conviction in Colombia and allegedly ran the cartel's money laundering operation here.Brazilian authorities have auctioned off much of his riches, including a yacht that sold for about US$1 million and a collection of watches and pens that fetched more than US$1 million.
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