Colombia extradites captured guerrilla to face terrorism charges in US

Colombia extradites captured guerrilla to US

BOGOTA — A captured leftist rebel who unwittingly helped officials rescue 15 hostages — including three American military contractors — was bundled aboard a plane to Florida on Saturday to face charges of terrorism in a U.S. federal court.

Prosecutors say that Nancy Conde Rubio, 37, led a finance and supply operation for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

She is also the former girlfriend of rebel Gerardo Aguilar, who helped keep watch over the hostages. Aguilar, alias “Cesar,” was extradited to the U.S. in July.

Colombia also sent back another woman and eight men to face charges in the United States related to drug trafficking. Authorities said 152 Colombians have been extradited to the U.S. over the past year.

U.S. prosecutors say Conde negotiated shipments of everything from assault rifles to condoms for distribution to about a third of the FARC’s estimated 9,000 fighters, including the 1st Front, which held the hostages.

Colombian security agents managed to start monitoring her phone calls in 2003, a few weeks after the Americans’ surveillance plane crashed in the southern Colombian jungle.

That helped squeeze rebel supply lines and led to the stunning July 2008 operation in which Colombian soldiers disguised as international aid workers rescued 15 hostages, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and the three Americans. Aguilar was captured in the action.

The U.S. government designates the FARC as a terrorist organization and Conde, who went by the nom de guerre of “Doris Adriana,” faces charges of conspiring to aid and giving material support to terrorist organizations. She was captured in Colombia in February 2008.

Her Colombian defense attorney, Armando Camacho, said that the extradition means that Colombia “once again sold its sovereignty and refused to have this woman tried in Colombia.”

“She has many things to tell” about the guerrilla group, Camacho told The Associated Press by telephone.

Left behind in Colombia is Conde’s son Javier, who turns 3 within a few weeks.