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Ex-paramilitary leader Miguel Angel Mejia Munera was handcuffed and wearing a bullet-proof before he boarded a plane for the United States




Ex-paramilitary leader Miguel Angel Mejia Munera was handcuffed and wearing a bullet-proof before he boarded a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) plane in Bogota bound for the United States, which had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.Colombia extradited one of its most-wanted drug lords to the United States on Wednesday to face charges of running an armed cocaine-smuggling gang with his twin brother, police said."With all the necessary procedures completed, Miguel Angel Mejia Munera was carried on a DEA plane to the United States," Colombian police said in a statement.Mejia, 49, had been held in a high-security prison in Colombia since his arrest last May. He is expected to be charged with drug trafficking and money laundering after his arrival in Miami.The U.S. State Department says he and his brother, Victor, shipped at least 68 tonnes of cocaine to the United States and Europe over a two-year period before their network was broken up in 2003.Victor Mejia was killed in a shootout with police days before his brother, known as "The Twin," was found in a secret compartment of a truck headed to Bogota.The brothers were leaders of far-right militias embroiled in a four-decade-old armed conflict in the world's top cocaine producer.They helped negotiate a controversial peace deal with President Alvaro Uribe starting in 2003 but refused to surrender after the talks and instead set up a cocaine smuggling network staffed by demobilized militia members.Paramilitary groups formed in the 1980s to help wealthy Colombians fight left-wing rebels. They also massacred civilians, trafficked cocaine and seized farmland in the name of the counter-insurgency.Since Uribe took office in 2002, he has led a U.S.-funded military crackdown and extradited more than 700 Colombians. But the South American nation still produces at least 600 tonnes of cocaine a year, most of which is sold on the streets of the United States and Europe
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