Extradition to the US!!! a quick note...

A recent big news story regarding Colombia and the United States is the extradition of 14 paramilitaries to the US, where they will be tried for drug trafficking. One of Uribe's main premises in favor of extraditing these individuals was due to the fact that they were still running their drug trade businesses from their jail cells. Due to continued concerns of violence and destabilization caused by illegal activity, the only remaining solution was to get them out of the country altogether. US authorities were happy to receive them, as part of the United States' War on Drugs (a complete failure, by the way), that requests the extradition of drug traffickers to stand trial in US courts.
However, those extradited were not only involved in drug trafficking, but also countless assassinations and human rights abuses.
By extraditing them, the Colombian government avoids hearing their testimonies regarding these crimes, many committed in conjunction with Colombian politicians and members of the armed services.
A little context: In 2005, paramilitaries and the Colombian government began a process of demobilization. As part of the subsequent law of Justicia y Paz, ex-paras would receive financial support for their reinsertion into civilian life in exchange for laying down their arms and confessing past crimes. Questions regarding the efficacy of the Justicia y Paz law aside, some had in fact confessed a portion of their past crimes. In fact, as part of these confessions, it officially surfaced that many of these crimes were carried out in complicity with or even at the order of the Colombian military. For example, as recently as May 7th and 8th, the infamous paramilitary "Don Berna" (who became a new Pablo Escobar), confessed from jail that his men, in conjunction with the military, carried out the 2005 Massacre in San José de Apartadó. However, five days later, he was among the 14 extradited to the US, where he will stand charges for drug trafficking, but will only be tried for crimes against humanity in the unlikely case that either Colombian prosecutors get access to him or UC Courts themselves address these issues.
It should be noted that Uribe argued that they should be extradited because the confessions in Colombia were moving at too slow a pace. While this is true, there is another perspective to consider: while continuing to reveal merely 10% of their crimes, the recently extradited paras in fact still represented almost half of the confessions made up to this point. These paras include the 14 plus the infamous "Macaco," who was extradited a week earlier. In other words, Uribe extradited many of the 'ex'-paramilitaries most likely to give testimony.
This is a travesty to the victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia. The testimony of these paramilitaries was crucial to the acknowledgement of the involvement of the state in these crimes, not to mention for the reparation of land and goods lost by these victims.
While one might argue that the extradition was an act of security and the Drug War, it appears more likely a strategy to silence those revealing human rights violations committed by paramilitaries in conjunction with the Colombian military. One can only hope that these crimes will in fact be addressed by US Courts.