Nelson Vargas Rueda was transferred from the village of Combita to a police air base in Bogota where he was handed over to US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, according to coronel Mario Gutierrez, director of Colombia's judicial police.

Gutierrez said Vargas Rueda is scheduled to appear before a US district court in Washington, to be tried for his alleged role in the murders of Indian rights activists Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahee'Enay Gay, in March 1999.

President Alvaro Uribe authorized the extradition of Vargas Rueda, alias "The Pig," on May 7, one month after Colombia's Supreme Court validated the charges brought by the United States.

Freitas, Washinawatok and Gay were working in Colombia with the indigenous U'wa people when they were kidnapped by FARC members on February 25, 1999. Their bullet-riddled bodies were found in a mass grave eight days later across the Venezuelan border.

The United States had asked Bogota to extradite Vargas Rueda and four other FARC members including fugitive German Briceno, brother of the FARC's number two official Jorge Briceno alias "Mono Jojoy."

With some 17,000 irregulars, the FARC is the largest rebel group battling the Colombian government.

WAR.WIRE