A U.S. court handed down Tuesday a 29-year sentence to Colombian FARC operative Erminso Cuevas Cabrera, alias “Mincho,” for conspiring to import cocaine into the country.
In April 2010, after a two-month trial, the U.S. found the 49-year-old guilty of conspiring to import the drug. The judge ruled that Mincho’s accomplice, Juan Jose Martinez Vega, alias “Chiguiro,” was guilty of the same offence.
Mincho was extradited to the U.S. in 2007, accused of being in charge of cocaine production for the FARC’s 14th Front, with “the weekly production of thousands of pounds of cocaine in laboratories hidden in the jungle.” Prosecutors claimed that he had “the knowledge and intention that this cocaine would be imported into the U.S.”
Normally, the charges faced by Mincho would lead to a prison term of between ten years and life, but due to the terms of an extradition treaty between the two countries, the U.S. government guaranteed that prosecutors would not demand a life sentence.