Colombian drug lord killed by security forces

Victor Mejia was Colombia's most wanted cocaine trafficker

COLOMBIA: COLOMBIA'S MOST wanted cocaine trafficker has been killed in a shootout with the country's security forces at a remote ranch, officials said yesterday.

Victor Manuel Mejia Munera, who was wanted by the US with a $5 million bounty on his head, was gunned down in the northwestern state of Antioquia on Tuesday. The authorities initially confused him with his twin brother, Miguel Angel, who is also wanted in the US. Fingerprints later revealed the correct identity.

"At the time he was shot by the police Victor Mejia was carrying documents of his twin," said a police statement. "This was a strategy they often used to confuse even the members of their own security teams." His brother remained at large.

The twins led a gang which, from the 1990s, allegedly smuggled huge quantities of cocaine from South America's top producer to the US. An extradition request issued in 2004 said the siblings trafficked nearly 70 tonnes in two years. "The twins were the most powerful leaders in Colombia's new generation of criminal bands, which combine paramilitary and drug-cartel structures and pose the biggest threat to Colombia's future," said Pablo Casas, an analyst at the Bogota think-tank Security and Democracy.

Police were believed to have been on the trail for some time when an informant led them to the ranch, La Union, and a confrontation with Mejia. Two men described as bodyguards were killed with him and three others were captured.

The brothers' empire evolved amid a murky nexus between Colombia's narco-trafficking mafias and right-wing militia groups, which were battling left-wing guerrillas. The militias supposedly disbanded under a peace deal with the government, but the Mejias remained fugitives.

Over the past seven years Washington has spent $5.5 billion boosting Colombia's army and police. As a result, guerrillas who blend Marxism with cocaine trafficking have been pushed into the jungle. - (Guardian service)

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times