New U.S.-Colombia Unit Nabs Alleged Heroin Kingpin

BOGOTA, Colombia — One of Colombia’s top alleged heroin traffickers was captured in the capital, police said Sunday, in the first arrest by a newly created joint U.S.-Colombian drug unit.

Waldo Simeon Vargas has three outstanding arrest warrants against him in Colombia and seven in neighboring Peru on drug-trafficking and illicit-enrichment charges, National Police Chief Rosso Jose Serrano told reporters.

Vargas, alias “the Minister,” was seized as he left the National Exhibition Center in central Bogota with his Peruvian-born wife and three children late Saturday. He was carrying false Peruvian identity papers, but police said he is from the emerald-mining province of Boyaca in central Colombia.

“This well-known drug trafficker is one of the capos of the heroin trade in Colombia,” Serrano told a news conference. “We are delighted with his capture.”

Vargas’ arrest is the first success for the specialist Anti-Heroin Unit, made up of Colombian counter-narcotics police and members of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, that was set up last week. No U.S. agents were thought to have been involved in the arrest.

Serrano said Vargas is a former henchman of Pablo Escobar, kingpin of the notorious Medellin cartel. He allegedly switched to the rival Cali mob after Escobar was shot to death by police in 1993 and afterward created his own independent heroin-trafficking organization after the Cali capos were arrested in 1995.

Vargas is alleged to have overseen massive cocaine processing operations in jungle laboratories in Peru’s Upper Huallaga region on behalf of Escobar, beginning in 1982.