From the New York Times, May 15:

Colombian Warlord Pleads Not Guilty to Drug Charges
A right-wing Colombian paramilitary leader who has been accused of ordering hundreds of political assassinations and smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States — including drugs that were sold from a busy Brooklyn crack house — pleaded not guilty to drug charges Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan.

The paramilitary leader, Diego Fernando Murillo, 47, was extradited from Colombia on Tuesday along with 13 other jailed warlords as part an effort by President Álvaro Uribe to take a hard line against them and defuse a scandal. Mr. Murillo had been held in Colombia since 2005.

The heavyset Mr. Murillo, who has a prosthetic leg and entered the courtroom with a pronounced limp, held his loose-fitting blue jeans up with one hand. He appeared weary and remained seated as his lawyer entered the not guilty plea.

The indictment against Mr. Murillo charges that he conspired to import thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States and to launder the drug proceeds. Prosecutors said the group for which he was the de facto leader, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, supported its paramilitary activities and enriched its leaders through drug trafficking. The State Department has designated it as a foreign terrorist organization.

During the brief court proceeding, Paul R. Nalven, a lawyer for Mr. Murillo, portrayed him as a pleasant and placid diplomat who served as a negotiator between Colombia’s government and the right-wing paramilitary faction he heads.

Contending that his client "conducts himself like a gentleman" and presents "zero physical threat," Mr. Nalven asked the judge, Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court, to consider overruling a decision by the United States Marshals Service to house Mr. Murillo in a high-security section of the federal jail in Manhattan. Judge Berman suggested that Mr. Nalven contact federal jail authorities.

One of the prosecutors, Eric Snyder, an assistant United States attorney, acknowledged that Mr. Nalven's client was a sophisticated man, but he painted a very different picture of him.

"We argue that he is a sophisticated man who is capable of being the de facto leader of a 15,000-strong paramilitary organization, which was a cocaine importation empire," Mr. Snyder told the judge. "We would also argue that, as opposed to being a tranquil person, we will offer evidence that he was in fact an assassin in Medellín" in his earlier years.

Responding to Mr. Nalven's contention that his client respected authority, Mr. Snyder said Mr. Murillo was "widely believed to have been involved in the murder" of a member of the Colombian Congress. Others of the extradited warlords had been tied to senior lawmakers in the Colombian Congress and to members of Mr. Uribe's family.

Mr. Snyder said the murder of the member of Congress led to Mr. Murillo's arrest, but investigators have said the investigation into Mr. Murillo, who was believed to be responsible for much of the cocaine that wound up in New York City, began there in 2003 with a New York detective who first heard about him from an informant.

From FOR Colombia Program Peace Presence Update, June 2008:

May 13 brought promising news in the field of justice and accountability for human rights violations committed against the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Captain Guillermo Gordillo, the highest army official arrested so far in connection with the February 2005 massacre, seeking some leniency, had finally decided to cooperate with prosecutors, and confessed that the massacre was perpetrated in a joint operation by the 17th Brigade and right wing death squads under the command of paramilitary leader Don Berna.

He went further to say that his superiors were implicated in the massacre, and were aware of what was happening. According to the daily El Tiempo, Gordillo told human rights prosecutors that the military operation had been "planned long ago from above, with ranking commanders."

The hearing was adjourned. The next day, May 14, Don Berna and 13 other paramilitary leaders who had demobilized in the framework of the so-called Justice and Peace Law were sent to the United States to face drug-related charges. With the extradition of paramilitary bosses went Gordillo's willingness to confess: on May 15, Gordillo's attorney requested that the hearing be suspended indefinitely, a move suggesting that his client's willingness to cooperate with prosecutors had come to an end.

From Reuters, June 17:

NEW YORK - A former top Colombian paramilitary commander pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to smuggle tons of cocaine worth millions of dollars into the United States, U.S. prosecutors said.

Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, 47, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court after Colombia's surprise decision to extradite him along with 13 other paramilitary leaders in May.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan say Murillo, also known as "Don Berna," was a paramilitary chief who once dominated the Medellin underworld as a leader of the United Self-Defenses Forces of Colombia (AUC). He faces up to 33 years in prison when he is sentenced December 12.