WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- A U.S. grand jury has charged a Colombian rebel commander and six of his associates with running a massive smuggling operation that funneled cocaine into the United States, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.
The indictment said the cocaine operation was used to obtain money, weapons and equipment for the rebel group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the charges illustrate the connection between terrorist groups and the drug trade.
The State Department has called FARC "the most dangerous international terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere," Ashcroft said. "The lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also fertile ground for the drug trade that supports terrorism."
The group has killed at least 13 U.S. citizens and kidnapped more than 100 others, the attorney general said.
The indictment charges rebel commander Tomas Molina Caracas, Carlos Bolas, Nelson Barrera, Luis Fernando da Costa, Leonardo Dias Mendonca and two John Does with conspiracy to manufacture and import cocaine into the United States.
Ashcroft said all but one of the suspects is believed to be at large in Colombia. The exception is da Costa, a Brazilian national now in custody in Brazil.
The attorney general said the United States is asking Colombia to capture and extradite all the remaining suspects to the United States, as well as forfeit to the United States their illicit proceeds.
Ashcroft brushed off reporters' skeptical questions -- the Colombians have been trying to capture FARC members for decades -- and said the United States would cooperate in any manhunt.
The indictment says Caracas commanded FARC forces known as the "16th Front, which operated in and effectively controlled large areas of eastern Colombia."
At the same time, the indictment alleges, Caracas was the leader of the cocaine trafficking operation. Other FARC "fronts" sent cocaine to the Caracas operation, and FARC-produced cocaine allegedly was smuggled from eastern Colombia to the United States, Mexico and Spain, among other countries, according to the indictment.
The conspirators allegedly operated from at least 1994 in the tiny Colombian town of Barranco Minas on the Guaviare River, about 100 miles from the border with Venezuela and Brazil, until at least February 2001.
A Colombian air force plane bombed the local airstrip and the operation was moved elsewhere in eastern Colombia, the indictment said.
To give an idea of how massive the operation was the indictment says that in one trip in September, one pilot flew 200 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Suriname for Caracas.
Ashcroft announced the unsealing of the indictment Monday, along with Asa Hutchinson, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Michael Chertoff, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division.
Hutchinson said, "This is the first time members and certain leaders of FARC have been named on drug charges."
The indictment was returned by a grand jury in Washington on March 7. Hutchinson said the delay in unsealing the indictment was to allow time to safely secure witnesses in the case.
