Receive our newsletter by typing your email address below. Victor Tafur's Kafkaesque Nightmare Robert J. Goldstein is the Director of Environmental Programs at Pace University School of Law. The case abounds in Kafkaesque ironies. Victor, according to Mr. Goldstein, works actively against drugs as did his father, a Colombian legislator, who was killed by the Colombian drug cartel for supporting a law allowing the extradition of drug criminals.
Victor now faces extradition under the terms of that very treaty.
If he returns to Colombia he, like his father, may be killed for his efforts opposing the cartel. Furthermore, it appears that Victor was arrested as a fugitive from drug charges in Colombia even though he apparently is not a fugitive and the drug case against him rests on the dubious claim that he had financial dealings with drug lords. Click here to read Mr. Goldstein's previous story. If it looks like a treaty, and reads like a treaty, it must be a treaty. But the Extradition Treaty Between Colombia and the United States, the treaty that is the basis for the recent arrest of Victor Tafur, an anti-drug crusading lawyer, is not a valid treaty, and may not be worth the paper it was written on.