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Alleged
Colombian drug lord Henry Lopez Londoño, aka «Mi Sangre,» or «My
Blood,» at his first court audience for his extradition to the
US, in Buenos Aires, May 17, 2016
AP
Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File
On Thursday, Argentine authorities sent one of Colombia’s most
powerful and connected drug traffickers to the US to face trial.
Henry Jesus Lopez Londoño, aka «Mi Sangre,» or «My Blood,» was
arrested in late 2012 at his favorite
restaurant in Pilar, a suburb of Argentine capital Buenos Aires.
After a multiyear fight against extradition, an Argentine court
approved Londoño’s extradition to face
drug-smuggling and conspiracy charges in the Southern District of Florida.
Early on Thursday, in an operation assisted by Interpol agents,
Londoño was handed over to US Marshals.
Londoño was something of a legacy member of Colombia’s narco
underworld.
Londoño got his start with Medellin-based criminal
group Oficina de Envigado, which emerged in Colombia’s second-largest city in
the mid-1990s, after the killing of Pablo Escobar and
the subsequent breakup of the Cali cartel (which provided much of the money spent to take down
Escobar).
During that time, Londoño worked with powerful Colombian crime
boss Diego Fernando Murillo, aka «Don Berna,» running drug-trafficking
operations and expanding into other illicit activities. Murillo,
after helping bring down Escobar, consolidated control of criminal networks in
and around Medellin, according to Insight Crime.
A
group of Self-Defense of Cauca paramilitaries walk as two girls
look on in the rural area of Cajibio, Colombia, in the southern
Cauca state, November 28, 2003.
AP
Photo
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Don Berna and Londoño developed ties to several units of one of
Colombia’s main right-wing paramilitary groups, the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
The AUC arose in part to protect the interests of bureaucratic elites, criminal
groups, and landowning Colombians. Both the AUC and rival
left-wing paramilitary groups, namely the FARC rebels, developed
extensive ties to drug trafficking.
The AUC and other related paramilitary groups started demobilized
in 2006 and Don Berna was extradited to the US in 2008. (The FARC
rebels fought on and are currently trying to secure a peace deal
with the Colombian government.)
After that Londoño and other former paramilitaries branched out
into criminal activities, principally the drug trade, in order to
support themselves.
They eventually formed Los Urabeños, a criminal band (Bacrim,
in its Spanish initials) also known as Cartel del Golfo or Clan
Usaga and that eventually made a bloody challenge to the Oficina
de Enviagado’s control of Medellin.
Leadership
of the Los Urabeños criminal group, according the US Office of
Foreign Asset Control.
US Treasury
Department
Los Urabeños grew their dominance of Colombia’s underworld,
eventually assuming control of Medellin and of trafficking on the
country’s Caribbean coast. Currently, Los Urabeños is considered
to be Colombia’s most powerful criminal group, the only one with
a truly national reach and partnering with Mexican cartels to smuggle
cocaine.
Londoño was able to avoid arrest or death at the hands of
Colombian authorities and his criminal rivals for some time, but
Urabeños leadership sent him to Argentina in 2010 for his own
protection, according to Insight Crime. According to Reuters, he
slipped into the country in 2011 using a
forged Venezuelan passport.
He was one of several high-level Colombian criminals hiding
out there, and it’s suspected his relocation there was part of an
effort by his criminal group to expand into Argentina, which has
both a large domestic drug market and is the fifth-largest
transit point for drugs bound to Europe and Asia, according to the UN.
At the time of his capture, Londoño was reportedly living in an
upscale section of Buenos Aires with his wife
and three young children.
Argentine
police escort Henry de Jesus Lopez Londoño outside a courthouse
in Buenos Aires, October 31, 2012.
REUTERS/Stringer
At the time of his arrest in October 2012, it was reported that he was traveling between
Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia and was posing as a
Venezuelan businessman in order apply for a visa to live in
Ecuador.
Londoño’s extradition comes as the center-right administration of
Argentina President Mauricio Macri works to improve ties with the US after an at-time
frosty relationship between Washington and Macri’s predecessor,
leftist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Macri based his presidential candidacy on improving the country’s
economy, to be brought about in part by attracting US investment,
according to Reuters.
Since Macri’s election at the end of last year, both US President
Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have visited Argentina. Macri was also one of the
few leaders from the region to contact Donald Trump after he won the
presidency.
Macri has also stepped up his country’s fight against the drug
trade. In January, he declared a state of emergency and reinstated
a shoot-down policy targeted at suspected drug planes. An average
of 40 such planes are thought to cross into
northern Argentina each month.
Argentina has also increased security operations at the northern
port of Rosario, the country’s third-largest port that is
believed to be a major hub for drug trafficking and has seen high
levels of drug-related violence in recent years.
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