Drug traffickers declared total war on Colombia's government and legal system, unleashing a wave of bombings, arson and terror Thursday in retaliation for official efforts to extradite drug kingpins to the United States for trial.
Suspected members of the so-called "Extraditables," a commando group financed by cocaine cartels, blew up the headquarters of two political parties, killing one person. They also torched the homes of two prominent politicians and issued a statement threatening government officials, journalists, business leaders and judges."We declare total war on the government, on the industrial and political oligarchy, on journalists who have attacked and abused us, on judges who have sold out to the government, on extraditing magistrates, on the presidents of trade unions and on all who have attacked us," the group said in a statement delivered to radio stations.
The attacks represented the first reprisals by drug traffickers since Friday, when President Virgilio Barco promised to extradite the leaders of narcotics rings to the United States, where many of them face trial for drug offenses.
Colombian authorities also arrested thousands of suspected drug traffickers and confiscated their property in a sweeping crackdown following the slayings last week of a superior court judge, a police chief and a leading presidential candidate, all of whom had taken a stand against drug trafficking in Colombia, the source of most of the cocaine consumed in the United States.
Most of the attacks Thursday were in Medellin, a provincial capital 170 miles north of Bogota and home of the world's largest cocaine cartel, according to U.S. officials.
Police said a bomb exploded Thursday in the offices of opposition Social Conservative Party, killing Oscar Marin, 32. Another bomb explosion ripped through the officies of the New Liberalism Party, causing an estimated $164,500 damage but no causalites.
Security agents deactivated two other bombs at the Medellin offices of nationwide radio networks RCN and Caracol, police said. Suspected drug gangs also set fire to the homes of Edgar Gutierrez Castro, a former government minister, and Sen. Velez Escobar, in Medellin's outskirts, police said.
"Narcotics trafficking has to be fought as the most abominable crime of the century," Venezuela's President Carlos Andres Perez said Tuesday. Perez said it would have to be considered a crime "without frontiers" to combat effectively.