Drug lord described as `murderer of murderers’ killed

Bogota, Dec 30 (IANS/EFE) Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced Wednesday that ruthless drug lord Pedro Guerrero, alias “Cuchillo” (knife), was killed last week in a clash with police. Santos described Guerrero as “the murderer of murderers”.

“The murderer of murderers fell. We were on his trail for many years. He had become a kind of legend who was unreachable,” Santos told a press conference where he was joined by Colombia’s top cop, Gen. Oscar Naranjo.

People who provided information about Guerrero’s whereabouts will receive the $2.5 million reward authorities posted for his capture, the president said.

Guerrero, also wanted by US authorities, died in a Christmas Day police operation in an area along the border between the southern Colombian provinces of Meta and Guaviare.

It was only Wednesday that medical examiners were able to definitively identify the body of Cuchillo, a drug lord whose armed militia killed some 3,000 people and forced scores of peasants off their land.

Guerrero perished clutching “the knife with which he slit the throats of his victims”, Santos said.

Two police officers also died in last week’s battle, while eight members of Guerrero’s self-styled Anti-terrorist Popular Revolutionary Army of Colombia were arrested.

Cuchillo began his criminal career working for the late Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, the military chief of the now-defunct Medellin drug cartel, and later joined the Centauros Bloc of the since-disbanded AUC federation of right-wing militias.

The successful operation shows that “there is no one who escapes the forcefulness, courage and determination” of Colombia’s police and armed forces, Santos said.

–IANS/EFE