Extradition benefits Colombian warlords
CALABAZO, Colombia — Julio Henríquez Santamaría was leading a community meeting in this hamlet when he was abducted by paramilitary thugs, thrown into the back of a Toyota pickup and disappeared forever on Feb. 4, 2001.
Ahead of his time, Henríquez had been organizing farmers to substitute legal crops like cacao for coca, which the current Colombian government, on the verge of ending a civil war fueled by the narcotics trade, is promoting as an antidrug strategy.
But Hernán Giraldo Serna, or his men, didn’t like it, or him.
From his early days as a small-time marijuana farmer, Giraldo had grown into El Patrón, a narcotics kingpin and paramilitary commander whose antiinsurgent mission had devolved into a murderous criminal enterprise controlling much of Colombia’s northern coast.
Henríquez was hardly his only victim; Giraldo, whose secondary alias was the Drill because of his rapacious appetite for underage girls, had all kinds. But Henríquez became the emblematic one, with a family tenacious enough to pursue Giraldo even after he, along with 13 other paramilitary leaders, was whisked out of Colombia and into the United States on May 13, 2008, to face drug charges.
It happened in a deadof-night extradition that stunned Colombia, where the men stood accused of atrocities in a transitional justice process that was abruptly interrupted. U.S. takes priority
The U.S.-led war on drugs seized priority over Colombia’s efforts to confront crimes against hu- manity.
Victims’ advocates howled that it was like exporting “14 Pinochets.” Henríquez’s family, meanwhile, quietly vowed to hold at least one of them accountable.
“We hope that the effort we have made over all these years means that things won’t end with impunity,” said his daughter Bela Henríquez Chacín, 32, who was 16 when her father was murdered and hopes to speak at Giraldo’s sentencing in Washington next month.
Whether this recognition is more than symbolic remains to be seen. Giraldo’s fellow extraditees have received relatively lenient treatment for major drug traffickers who also were designated terrorists responsible for massacres, forced disappearances and the displacement of entire villages, an investigation found. Light sentances
Once the paramilitary Colombians — several dozen, all told — have completed their U.S. prison terms, they will have served on average seven and a half years, the Times found. The leaders extradited en masse will have served an average of 10 years, at most, for drug conspiracies that involved tons of cocaine.
By comparison, federal inmates convicted of crack cocaine trafficking — mostly street-level dealers who sold less than an ounce — serve on average just over 12 years.
And for some, there is a special dividend at the end of their incarceration: a green card.
Though wanted in Colombia, two have won permission to stay in the United States, and their families have joined them. Three more are seeking the same haven, and still others are expected to follow suit.