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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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091889
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09188900.034
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1990-09-17
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WORLD, Page 48COLOMBIAPassing the Extradition TestBy shipping Martinez to the U.S., Barco defies the coke lords
The operation went off with military precision. At about 6 p.m.
Wednesday, officers from the Dijin, a police special-operations
team, hustled Eduardo Martinez Romero out the back door of a
maximum-security Bogota jail while other officers distracted
reporters and photographers gathered in front. Martinez, wanted in
Atlanta in connection with a $1.2 billion money-laundering scheme,
was taken aboard a jet owned by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration and flown to his long-postponed rendezvous with U.S.
justice.
With the extradition of Martinez, President Virgilio Barco
Vargas proved his resolve in the battle against Colombia's drug
traffickers. Barco vowed to drive the dealers out of his country
after the Aug. 18 murder of Senator Luis Carlos Galan, one of
Colombia's leading presidential candidates. Martinez, 34, a reputed
money manager for the Medellin cocaine cartel, was the first victim
of Barco's executive order reviving a U.S.-Colombia extradition
treaty invalidated by the Colombian Supreme Court in 1987.
Martinez was hustled to the federal courthouse in Atlanta early
Thursday, where at a preliminary hearing U.S. Magistrate Joel M.
Feldman read a thick list of charges accusing him of laundering
millions of dollars for the cartel. If convicted, he could be
sentenced to 30 years in prison. In Washington officials were
exultant. "I applaud the extraordinary courage of President
Virgilio Barco and the government of Colombia in their effort to
restore the rule of law," said Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
But in Colombia others paid a high price for Barco's boldness.
Luz Amparo Gomez, 29, a former investigator for the attorney
general's office who was involved in a legal action against drug
kingpin Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, was driving to her home when
gunmen shot her to death. Hours later, the wife of a police major
was gunned down outside her home. A day earlier, the wife of an
intelligence officer attached to the 13th Brigade, the army unit
that has spearheaded the crackdown, was murdered.
For the moment, the authorities are undaunted. At midweek
Colombian television began running 30-second commercials featuring
mug shots of Rodriguez Gacha and Medellin cartel leader Pablo
Escobar Gaviria, and offering 100 million pesos -- about $250,000
-- for information leading to their arrest.
Some American officials were still questioning whether Barco
will follow through with new deportations in the face of both
popular opposition and the terror campaign by the narcotraficantes.
"As the cartel continues putting bombs here and there and appeals
to nationalism," said one State Department official in Washington,
"Colombians are going to start asking, `Why are we getting blown
up just to satisfy the gringos?'"
But U.S. officials have concluded that the harsh Colombian
campaign, for the moment at least, is having a real effect on the
supply of cocaine in the U.S. "The cartels are having trouble
getting cocaine out of Colombia," said Pat O'Brien, outgoing chief
of U.S. Customs in Miami. The government has seized so many of the
traffickers' planes and helicopters that they may be having
difficulty moving the powder to Colombia's northern coast, the main
shipment point for cocaine. And on the drug-hungry streets of the
U.S., the price of cocaine is skyrocketing.