Extradite Me — Please! (Updated)

Here’s a story you don’t see everyday — a Colombian drug kingpin who wants to be extradited to the U.S.:

The lawyer of a reputed leader of Colombia’s biggest drug cartel said Tuesday he will travel to Washington to discuss ways to speed up his client’s extradition to the United States.

Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, 44, who faces three U.S. federal indictments on drug and racketeering charges, was arrested last week in a luxury condominium on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city.

Authorities say Ramirez Abadia is a leader of the Norte del Valle cartel, which emerged as Colombia’s most powerful drug gang in the mid-1990s. In 1996 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison in Colombia on a drug conviction, but was released in 2001. He was allegedly in Brazil to command the cartel’s money laundering operation there.

Sergio Alambert, Ramirez Abadia’s attorney, said he would meet with a Justice Department official on Monday to seek ways to speed up his client’s extradition to the United States.

Ramirez Abadia fears for his life in Colombia and would prefer to begin serving his U.S. prison sentence without being sentenced to additional time in Brazil, Alambert said Tuesday.

Brazilian law, however, bans turning over foreign suspects if they face the death penalty or a sentence of more than 30 years.

[snip]

U.S. officials say they will soon file a request to extradite Ramirez Abadia to face racketeering charges under a 2004 indictment. Colombian authorities have hinted they may also seek custody.

It will be interesting to see whether the U.S. will promise Brazil not to seek a sentence of more than 30 years. There is precedent for doing so: just last week, the Brazilian Supreme Court decided that Brazil could extradite another Colombian drug lord, Fernando Camacho Martinez, if the U.S. made a “formal guarantee” that it would seek a sentence that satisfies Brazilian law, something the U.S. seems inclined to do. Making a similar promise regarding Ramirez Abadia would be quite a gift to the Colombian: a few days after Ramirez Abadia announced his desire to be extradited to the U.S., federal prosecutors in New York indicted him for the murder of a member of the Russian Mafia.

UPDATE: At the invaluable International Law Reporter, Jacob Katz Cogan has a fascinating post on the numerous — and complicated! — issues surrounding Ramirez Abadia’s desire to be extradited to the U.S. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in extradition.