Last update - 00:00 29/08/2007
Israel Police provided information that led to arrest of ex-IDF officer in Moscow
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
Former Israel Defense Forces officer Yair Klein, who is wanted for training paramilitaries in Colombia and was arrested Monday in Moscow, was detained based on information provided by Israel Police.
Israel Police informed Colombia of Klein's intention to travel to Israel via Russia.
Colombia said Tuesday it would request that Russia extradite Klein, who was convicted in absentia in 2001 for training paramilitaries in the Andean country.
Klein, 61, was sentenced to 10 years in jail by a Colombian court for training recruits for paramilitaries in their brutal campaign to counter Latin America's oldest left-wing rebel insurgency.
Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo said the government would ask that Klein be extradited to carry out his sentence in the Andean country, where the disarming of illegal paramilitaries has helped ease violence.
"Colombia's government is going to make a formal petition to the Russian Foreign Ministry, so he is sent here to pay his sentence," Araujo said.
In 1998, Colombian prosecutors accused Klein and three Israeli associates of providing paramilitary training in the Magdalena valley between 1987 and 1989 and also working as mercenaries for the Medellin drug cartel, a charge he denied.
Colombia said Klein was sentenced in 2001 to 10 years by a local court for instructing terrorist techniques and conspiring to commit a crime.
He said publicly at the time that ranking Colombian military officers were aware of his paramilitary training activities.