Former Colombian soldier sentenced to 12 years in prison in the US for drug trafficking

The United States Department of Justice reported on Tuesday the sentence to 12 years in prison for Fabián Humberto Tovar Caicedo, a former Colombian Army Intelligence sergeant who conspired between 2017 and 2018 to carry out drug operations from his country, passing through Mexico, to take it to the US.

“Tovar Caicedo organized multiple meetings in support of the cocaine distribution scheme. He and his accomplices conspired to send multiple shipments, starting with 1,000 kilograms of cocaine and going up to 10,000 kilograms for each shipment,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

The US agency said Tovar sent a member of his criminal organization to Mexico “to negotiate the receipt of the cocaine with a high-ranking Mexican military officer.”

It is about, reported Justice, the fifth official of the Colombian army to be sanctioned in relation to drug trafficking.

In one of the operations, described in the document, Tovar and his Air Force accomplices acted to try to send 1,773 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Guatemala bound for the US in 2017; the following year, they tried again with 2,081 kilograms of cocaine from their country to Mexico.

The Department of Justice did not give details but assured that both caches were seized by the Colombian police.

Finally, the US government thanked the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and the Judicial Attaché of the US embassy in Bogotá for “providing substantial assistance to ensure the arrest and extradition of the defendants.”

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