Colombia Police Arrest Top Narcotics Operator

A drug trafficker who worked with the Medellin and Cali cartels and led narcotics operations in Peru has been arrested, police said Sunday.

Waldo Vargas Arias, 42, was captured Saturday night as he ate dinner with two of his three sons and a cousin at a fair in the capital, Bogota.

Vargas confessed to police that he supplied raw cocaine to the drug laboratories of Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar during the 1980s, said Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, the national police chief.

Vargas, who is also suspected of heroin trafficking, contacted leaders of the rival Cali drug cartel after security forces killed Escobar in 1993, Serrano said. The founders of the Cali cartel, Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, are now in jail.

Peruvian police provided information that helped lead to the arrest of Vargas, a Colombian who is wanted on drug charges in the neighboring country.

Colombia, however, forbids the extradition of its citizens.