BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- In the biggest blow to Colombian drug trafficking since 1995, authorities arrested 30 people, including Fabio Ochoa, a principal in the once-powerful Medellin cartel, the national police director announced Wednesday.
The suspects were all seized Tuesday night and those captured in Colombia will be extradited to the United States for trial, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano told reporters.He said Colombian police worked "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in the yearlong investigation that began in Houston and Ecuador and tracked the ring's operations all the way to Europe.
"These people made gigantic shipments of drugs and flooded the U.S. markets," he said.
Colombia is the world's leading exporter of cocaine and a growing source of heroin.
The sting was dubbed Operation Millennium and Serrano called it the most important blow to drug traffickers in Colombia since the Cali cocaine cartel's leaders were captured in 1995, ending the era of Colombia's huge vertically organized cartels.
Ochoa, 42, was arrested at his home in Medellin, the country's second-largest city, authorities said. Three years ago, he had been released from prison after serving two-thirds of an 81/2-year sentence for drug trafficking.
From a well-known ranching and horse-breeding family, Ochoa was among leaders of the Medellin cartel, whose fall was consummated by the December 1993 killing by police of cartel boss Pablo Escobar.
"You would have thought that the Ochoas would be careful, attending to their fortune," Serrano said. Ochoa's two older brothers, Jorge Luis and Juan David, also served jail time for drug trafficking and were released in 1996.
It was not clear whether U.S. authorities would seek to prosecute Fabio Ochoa under 1980s indictments in that country for drug trafficking and other crimes.
Colombia has not extradited anyone for trial in the United States since 1990, although extradition was restored with a December 1997 law.
That law applies only to crimes committed after its enactment and its lack of retroactivity protected the jailed former heads of the now-defunct Cali and Medellin cocaine cartels.
To pressure Colombian leaders into preventing the extradition of its leaders to the United States, the Medellin cartel waged a bloody campaign of bombings and assassinations in the last 1980s and early 1990s that claimed hundreds of lives.
Serrano said U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Colombia's ambassador to Washington, Luis Alberto Moreno, would announce more details at a news conference in the U.S. capital later Wednesday.