Colombia extradites rebel 'Sonia' on drug charges

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia today sent Marxist rebel Nayibe Rojas, known as "Sonia" and one of the business brains behind the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, to the United States to face drug charges.

Indicted in a federal court in Washington in 2003, Rojas managed the finances of the group, known by its Spanish initials FARC, until her capture last year, US officials say.

She knows so much about the inner workings of the FARC that Colombian officials in December moved her to a ship at sea for fear the group had a plan to kill her to keep her from revealing information under interrogation.

The FARC has denied it had any plan to assassinate her.

Rojas took off from a Barranquilla military airport in a white US Drug Enforcement Administration plane.

President Alvaro Uribe, a staunch Washington ally, has increased extraditions during his 2 1/2 years in power.

Uribe's tough security policies have reduced violence from the country's 40-year-old guerrilla war involving leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, both linked to the Andean country's huge cocaine business.

Rojas' extradition dampened possibilities that the government and the FARC might reach a proposed "humanitarian exchange" to swap about 70 hostages for rebels in government jails. The FARC refuses Uribe's demand that any prisoners released not rejoin guerrilla ranks.

"The extradition of Sonia reaffirms the government's position that it will not negotiate with terrorists. For now this closes the possibility of a humanitarian exchange," said Mauricio Romero, political analyst at Bogota's Rosario University.

The FARC's hostages include three Americans - US Defence Department contractors captured in February 2003 - and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen.

The next expected high profile extradition is that of Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, a former boss of the Cali cartel, which once controlled most of the world's cocaine trade.

- REUTERS