Last update - 00:00 12/03/2008
Russia to extradite Israeli wanted by Colombia for allegedly training guerillas
By Reuters
Russia will extradite a former Israel Defense Forces officer to Colombia where he has been convicted of training paramilitaries, a Moscow city court spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
Russian police detained Yair Gal Klein at a Moscow airport in August, following a tipoff from Interpol.
A Colombian court sentenced Klein in absentia in 2001 to 10 years in jail for training paramilitaries in "terrorist techniques".
He was also accused of working as a mercenary for the Medellin drug cartel in the 1980s, a charge he denied.
A court spokeswoman said Klein, a reservist IDF lieutenant-colonel, now had 10 days in which to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court. If he did not do so, the extradition would take effect.
Colombia had asked Russia to extradite Klein to serve his sentence in the Andean country, where the disarming of illegal paramilitaries has helped ease years of violence.
Colombia's paramilitary movement began in the 1980s when wealthy landowners banded together for protection against attacks, kidnapping and extortion by leftist guerrillas in rural areas.
But the militias soon turned to drug trafficking and kidnapping themselves as they snatched land and killed peasants in the name of counter-insurgency.
Aided by billions of dollars of U.S. funding, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has led a crackdown on rebels and negotiated the disarmament of the paramilitary movement. The rebels are still fighting, aided by money from the drug trade.