2 Colombian Navy cadets to face U.S. trial over alleged Navy recruitment to smuggle drugs
March 19 (UPI) -- Two former Colombian Navy cadets have been extradited to the United States to stand trial for allegedly recruiting active Navy personnel to smuggle drugs into the country.
On Wednesday, an indictment revealed that Jair Alberto Alvarez Valenzuela, 54, and his counterpart Luis Carlos Diaz Martinez, 32, will stand trial in an American court for allegedly conspiring to distribute cocaine having reasonable cause to believe it would be unlawfully imported into the United States, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Sara C. Sweeney for Florida's Middle District.
Alvarez Valenzuela and Diaz Martinez, both Colombian nationals, were handed to U.S. officials on Thursday as part of an initiative of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Strike Force.
If convicted, both defendants face a maximum penalty of life in a federal prison.
The indictment indicated that Alvarez Valenzuela and Diaz Martinez were both former employees of the Colombian National Navy.
It's said the two recruited active-duty Navy members to secretly plant global positioning system tracking devices in Colombian Navy vessels in exchange for money from drug traffickers.
Transnational Criminal Organizations, meanwhile, used that location data to direct vessels filled with what is believed to be cocaine that was bound for the U.S. border around Colombian Navy ships and patrol boats.
News of the indictment and extradition arrived the same day the FBI revealed it was renaming its Terrorist Screening Center to "Threat Screening Center."
It was, according to the bureau, part of the federal government's newly "expanded" and "broader mission" to combat foreign threats by America's "lead terrorist watchlisting entity," which was to factor in other international criminal syndicates including drug trafficking.
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