Colombia says it will respect active extradition processes

The Colombian government indicated on Friday that it will not ask the country’s authorities to suspend the capture of people who have an active formal extradition process in order to enable them to take part in peace talks.

The Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, told the press that they are going to “respect many of these processes” of active extradition after finishing a meeting in Washington with Juan González, the main director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere of the United States.

The extradition agreement is one of the core issues in the bilateral relationship, since President Gustavo Petro -first of the left in Colombia- has suggested making substantial changes and has proposed to the United States allowing drug traffickers who negotiate with them not to be extradited. the Colombian government legal benefits and do not reoffend.

The United States is the country to which Colombia usually carries out the most extraditions. During the government of his predecessor Iván Duque (2018-2022), Colombia made more than 500 extraditions to the United States, according to the joint administration report.

A week ago, the Colombian government asked the Prosecutor’s Office to suspend the arrest warrant against several leaders of the Clan del Golfo cartel, including Jobanís de Jesús Ávila Villadiego, alias “Chiquito Malo”, who is wanted on drug trafficking charges in a New York District Court. The prosecutor’s office refused, considering that there is no legal basis to suspend the arrest warrants for armed groups without a political character.

Prada assured that in the case of alias “Chiquito Malo”, the government had no information that an extradition request was pending before the Ministry of Justice. He explained that they will not request the suspension of captures “to the extent that they also have sufficient information to not do so and to the extent that we advance in the establishment of the rules, we will have the complete legal framework to advance towards ‘total peace. ‘”.

The Colombian government has proposed advancing in a policy called “total peace” with which it intends to advance rapprochement and peace talks with illegal armed groups and criminal gangs, which include the Clan del Golfo and the guerrilla Army of National Liberation.

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