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Colombian drug kingpin killed
01/02/2008 21:26 - (SA)
Caracas - One of Colombia's most-wanted drug lords has been found slain, Venezuela's top counter-drug official said Friday.
Fingerprints of the man who was found shot to death in the Venezuelan city of Merida on Wednesday matched those of Wilber Varela, said Colonel Nestor Reverol, head of the National Anti-Drug Agency.
Varela, alias "Jabon," or "Soap," led a war with rival traffickers that killed more than 1 000 people in recent years, and the underworld is awash with tales of brutality that made him a household name in Colombia.
Colombia's police chief, General Oscar Naranjo, said that Varela, a former police officer himself, had entered the drug underworld as a hired killer.
"Wilber Varela in the last few years was truly the main leader of Colombian drug-trafficking organisations," Naranjo said in Bogota.
Varela had a private army along the western coast of Colombia that protected cocaine routes and eliminated rivals. His war with a rival in the Norte del Valle cartel, Diego Montoya, plagued the city of Cali and much of southwestern Colombia with violence.
Varela was indicted in US federal courts on drug trafficking charges in 2004, and the US State Department offered a reward of up to US$5m for his capture.
Colombian officials, who have lamented what they call a lack of counter-drug cooperation by Venezuela's government, had said previously that Varela was living in Venezuela.
The Norte del Valle cartel has taken several hits in the past year. They lost Juan Carlos "Chupeta" Ramirez Abadia, who was arrested in Brazil, and then Montoya - known as "Don Diego" - who was captured by the Colombian army is awaiting extradition to the United States.
Norte del Valle is Colombia's most famous remaining cartel, but it's also a new one, emerging from the decaying Cali cartel in the 1990s. The Norte del Valle cartel employed the violence of the Medellin cartel, along with the smarts and bribery of the Cali cartel to keep a low profile.
With Varela dead, it leaves brothers Miguel Angel Mejia and Victor Manuel Mejia, known as "Los Mellizos," as Colombia's most-wanted alleged drug lords.
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