Guatemala: On 18 August the Guatemalan drug king pin, Waldemar Lorenzana Lima, head of the local Lorenzana drug gang, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to ship over 450kg of cocaine to the US. The announcement was made by the US Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell and Acting Special Agent in Charge, Robert W. Patterson of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), in the District of Colombia. In a US justice department press release, Caldwell said: “The Kingpin and patriarch of this family has now been extradited and convicted in the US, and two of his sons are awaiting extradition from Guatemala”. According to the same press release, from March 1996 to April 2009 Lorenzana and three of his sons “conspired to distribute multi-ton quantities of cocaine within Guatemala and elsewhere, knowing that the narcotics would be illegally imported into the United States for distribution”. It continues: “the Lorenzana drug trafficking organization worked with drug trafficking organizations in Colombia and Mexico to transport shipments of cocaine by go-fast boats and airplanes to El Salvador and Guatemala for distribution to cities within the United States”. Lorenzana was arrested by Guatemalan authorities on 26 April 2011 and was extradited to the US in March 2014. Sentencing will be announced at a later date.
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