For the second time, drug trafficker Jairo Alberto Builes Molina will be extradited to the United States

For the second time Jairo Alberto Builes Molina will be extradited by the Colombian justice system to the United States for crimes related to drug trafficking. Since 1995, his name has appeared in judicial investigations for drug shipments to North America, cases of bribery of judges in Panama, arrests and requests for extradition.

The first time that alias Condorito was captured was recorded in July 2002. His arrest occurred in the midst of Operation Castaway, in which units of the National Police, the DEA, United States Customs and the Attorney General's Office of Colombia participated.

At that time he was designated as the head of an international network of drug traffickers and was requested by the justice of that country, as he was responsible for the crime of concert to possess, import and distribute cocaine and heroin.

In the judgment of Criminal Cassation Chamber No. 56118 of 2003 of the Supreme Court of Justice, the rapporteur Judge Eider Patiño considered that all the legal requirements for his extradition were met. On December 19, 2003, it was handed over by DIJIN at El Dorado airport to DEA agents.

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Apparently, this man paid his sentence in the North American country and would have returned to Colombia to continue to commit crimes. In the midst of investigations against the Gulf Clan, he was recaptured in 2019 by members of the Gaula Intelligence Unit, while training in the Laureles neighborhood of Medellín.

According to the authorities: “He was the person who was responsible for coordinating the criminal group in the capital of the department of Antioquia in order to get the drugs abroad.” From that moment on, alias Condorito, was in possession of the Colombian authorities.

But on the afternoon of this Tuesday, April 19, Supreme Court Justice Myriam Ávila endorsed the new extradition of Builes Molina. “The punishments of drug trafficking and a concert to commit crimes charged to Jairo Alberto Builes Molina in the indictment are not political in nature but common, and the events on which the international petition is based occurred approximately between January 2017 and January 2019,” says the court's decision.

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According to US investigations, alias Condorito allegedly allied with drug traffickers from Panama and Guatemala to obtain shipments of multiple kilograms of cocaine through speedboats and overland to the United States.

“The legally intercepted communications revealed that Builes Molina and several accomplices had planned that the operation that would leave Panama for Colombia, and that, upon arrival there, would collect an unknown amount of cocaine,” the accusation made by the United States authorities reads and was handed over to the Supreme Court.

As revealed by Semana magazine, Condorito's defense assured that the authorities had mistaken his client with a namesake, emphasizing that, “he would never have ties to this criminal gang and much less to drug trafficking.”

Finally, the Supreme Court of Justice emphasized that now the extradition process “must be conditioned on the obligation to send copies of the judgments or decisions that end the proceedings in the courts of that country, because of the charge charged to the defendant”.

Jairo Alberto Builes Molina is requested for extradition for offences related to “international distribution of cocaine and concert to distribute a controlled substance for the purpose of illegal import”.

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