Daniel Rendon Herrera, also known as “Don Mario,” a Colombian drug lord on Monday was extradited to the United States, it’s believed he headed one of the country’s largest drug cartels.
Don Mario, a former right-wing paramilitary leader was handed over to agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and “is en route to the United States,” said Colombia’s police chief General Jorge Nieto.
Rendon, a former leader of Colombia’s “united self-defense forces,” the right-wing paramilitary groups that formed to fight Marxist rebels, is due himself to appear before a US federal judge in New York on drug trafficking charges.
Rendon was taken during a raid in the jungle in 2009 however he was not extradited as the Supreme Court initially ruled that he could not be extradited until he had taken part in the country’s reparations process, which provides a degree of amnesty for former fighters who testify about crimes committed during the country’s half-century of civil war.
Colombia remains the world’s leading supplier of cocaine, much of which is smuggled to the United States, the world’s leading consumer of the drug.
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