Colombian Police, Don Berna, Paracos Failed Assassination Attempt; El Banda Famosos

Colombian drug gang takes 25 rival gunmen hostage

By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, April 4 (Reuters) - Cocaine traffickers fighting over smuggling routes in northern Colombia are waging war against each other, with seven people killed in one battle and 25 taken hostage, according to a video circulated on Friday.

Authorities have confirmed details of the 27-minute video, which was produced by one of the drug gangs and raises questions about police corruption.

Wanted drug lord Daniel Rendon, known as "Don Mario," says in the recording that his men killed a handful of gunmen sent by a former paramilitary boss to assassinate him. The tape shows 25 men who Rendon claims to have captured.

"We have had to join forces to defend against an extermination campaign," he says in the video, which was seized by police in Bogota and broadcast on local television.

National police chief Gen. Oscar Naranjo said two undercover police officers were among the seven killed. Rendon said they were working for his rivals.

"That is a very serious accusation. The police must clarify what these officers were doing there," said Pablo Casas, an analyst at Bogota think tank Security and Democracy.

Corruption among state security forces has long been a problem in the world's biggest cocaine-exporting country.

Naranjo called for the 25 hostages to be freed and warned that killings among former right-wing paramilitaries still tied to the cocaine trade are rising sharply.

Rendon is the brother of a former paramilitary warlord known as "El Aleman," or "The German," who is in prison after disarming in a government peace deal.

Rendon accuses another demobilized paramilitary chief, Diego Fernando Murillo, or "Don Berna," who once dominated the underworld in Medellin, of trying to kill him in a bid to dominate smuggling in the Gulf of Uraba, a departure point for cocaine shipments.

Murillo issued a statement dismissing the charge as a "clumsy set-up." It said he has left the drug business in accordance with the peace deal.

More than 30,000 "paras" have demobilized over the last five years in a process criticized by human rights groups for not forcing ex-militia leaders to dismantle their drug-smuggling and extortion networks.

The government admits that thousands of demobilized paramilitaries such as Rendon have returned to crime. The right-wing militias were formed in the 1980s to help drug traffickers and cattle ranchers combat Marxist rebels. (Editing by Xavier Briand)

By Medellin Traveler on Apr 5, 2008, 03:05 in Friendly Talkzone.