Colombia's Most Wanted

BOGOTA (AFP) – Colombian drug trafficker Diego Montoya, whose cartel exported almost 70 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States and Europe, was extradited Friday to the United States on drug charges, a police source said.

"He has already departed. 'Don Diego' (Montoya's alias) is en route to the United States," a police spokesman told AFP, noting the jet had taken off around 1550 GMT.

"Colombia is closing a chapter in its fight against drug trafficking," police chief General Oscar Naranjo told reporters, adding: "This extradition is perhaps the most important in years."

Montoya led a crime ring that over the course of the 1990s gradually replaced the notorious Cali and Medellin cartels.

When he was arrested in 2007, according to Colombian authorities, he was behind 70 percent of cocaine exports to the United States and Europe and blamed for more than 1,500 murders.

In 2004 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation put Montoya on its most wanted list, and estimated he was behind 60 percent of the cocaine exported to the United States.

Now about 50, Montoya had been jailed at the high security correctional facility in Boyaca department.

Colombian authorities say that the extradition came as the price of cocaine in the United States is rising, and its level of purity is sharply down, due to what they say are more successful drug eradication efforts.

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