Chavez says suspected Colombian drug lord arrested in Venezuela, will be deported to US

Venezuela captures alleged Colombian drug lord

CARACAS, Venezuela — The last remaining fugitive capo of Colombia’s Norte del Valle drug cartel has been captured in Venezuela and will be extradited to the United States, President Hugo Chavez announced Tuesday.

Carlos Alberto “Beto” Renteria, 65, was arrested Monday after he traveled to Venezuela’s Margarita Island, Chavez said during a speech. He provided no further details.

The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Renteria, whose cartel is accused in a 2004 U.S. indictment of shipping some 500 metric tons of cocaine to the U.S. beginning in 1990.

Chavez said Renteria could be extradited as soon as Wednesday.

Renteria is the second major Colombian drug trafficker wanted by U.S. authorities to be caught in Venezuela within the last month. Authorities arrested Luis Frank Tello on June 24.

Venezuela has in the more than 11 years since Chavez was first elected president become a major hub for traffickers smuggling Colombian cocaine to the United States and Europe.

U.S. and Colombian officials have frequently accused Chavez’s government of lax anti-drug efforts, including allowing Venezuela to become a safe haven for Colombian drug lords.

One senior law enforcement official in Colombia, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity, said Renteria had long been living in Venezuela.

“He is the last of the original Norte del Valle cartel leadership to be captured,” the official said.

Another top Norte del Valle cartel boss, Wilber Varela, spent most of the last five years of his life in Venezuela before he was slain there in January 2008, according to a former Venezuelan anti-drug chief, Mildred Camero.

The Norte del Valle cartel was Colombia’s last major drug gang, though its command structure was far less centrally organized than its forerunners, the Cali and Medellin cartels. It eventually split into two major warring factions, one of which Varela commanded.

Like many fugitive traffickers, Renteria underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance and make it more difficult to identify him, the law enforcement official in Colombia said.

Chavez accuses Washington and Bogota of unfairly labeling his country a drug haven for political reasons, arguing his government is doing everything possible to stem the flow of drugs through Venezuela.

But U.S. and Colombian officials say his government’s counterdrug efforts became bullish only in recent months, perhaps because Chavez recognizes what a serious national security threat drug-related corruption can be.

A report released last month by the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime identified Venezuela as the departure point for just over half of all sea shipments of cocaine headed for Europe.

The report also said “many undocumented air flights leave the South American country, and all the clandestine air shipments of cocaine detected in West Africa appear to have originated in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

It also said much of the cocaine flown to Honduras in Central America comes from Venezuela.

Associated Press Writer Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.