Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, aka “Macaco,” a paramilitary leader and one of Colombia’s most notorious drug traffickers, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison in Miami for leading an international drug trafficking conspiracy that supported a foreign terrorist organization.

According to court documents, Jimenez-Naranjo was one of the top leaders of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), a Colombian right-wing paramilitary and drug trafficking organization.  The AUC is a U.S. Department of State-designated foreign terrorist organization.  From the mid 1990s through 2007, Jimenez-Naranjo led the Bloque Central Bolivar (BCB), a group within the AUC, commanding an estimated 7,000 armed combatants. 

Jimenez-Naranjo controlled large areas where cocaine was produced, and his organization was responsible for exporting thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Central America, Mexico and the United States using seaports and clandestine airstrips.  Jimenez-Naranjo was extradited from Colombia to the United States on May 7, 2008, based on a provisional arrest warrant from separate indictments in the District of Columbia and in the Southern District of Florida.

The evidence from the two cases established that Jimenez-Naranjo’s drug trafficking organization processed and manufactured multi-ton quantities of cocaine in Colombia-based laboratories and exported that cocaine from Colombia to Central America, Mexico and elsewhere, some of which was ultimately imported into the United States .

During the same time, Jimenez-Naranjo permitted the proceeds of his cocaine production and trafficking activities to be used to facilitate and finance the activities of the AUC.