Geovany Andrés Rojas, alias “Araña,” leader of the armed group Comandos de la Frontera and a participant in peace talks with the previous government, was extradited from Colombia to the United States on Friday, September 25, 2026, to face narco-terrorism and cocaine-trafficking charges in San Diego, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. He was scheduled to make his initial appearance before US Magistrate Judge Steve B. Chu at 2 p.m. on Monday, September 28, 2026.

Rojas, 45, is one of five people whose extraditions President Abelardo de la Espriella ordered to proceed on August 26, 2026. The administration of former President Gustavo Petro had suspended those extraditions because the five were serving as representatives in peace processes with the government, as Finance Colombia reported in August. Only three of the five, Rojas among them, were in Colombian custody at the time of the order; the other two were fugitives, according to Cambio.

De la Espriella said on August 26 that he had found no verifiable contributions to peace from the five. Cambio quoted him as saying: “Dialogue processes cannot become refuges from justice, nor can the word ‘peace’ be used as a safe-conduct to preserve privileges while serious judicial demands remain pending.”

Two counts with mandatory minimums

A federal grand jury in the Southern District of California returned a two-count superseding indictment against Rojas on March 7, 2025, charging him with international conspiracy to distribute cocaine and with narco-terrorism. The conspiracy count carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to life in prison, and the narco-terrorism count carries a mandatory minimum of 20 years and up to life. The case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of the California Homeland Security Task Force. The Justice Department noted that the charges are accusations and that Rojas is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The Justice Department described Comandos de la Frontera, which Rojas led and spoke for, as a paramilitary organization with an estimated 1,000 members operating in southwestern Colombia. It said a long-term investigation found the group profited from the cultivation and production of cocaine in one of Colombia’s top cocaine-producing regions and held its territory through weapons and violence. Infobae, citing authorities, reported that under his command the organization consolidated its presence in parts of the departments of Putumayo and Caquetá, and that the group’s operations were tied to cocaine trafficking and control of routes toward Ecuador.

DEA Administrator Terry Cole said in the Justice Department’s announcement: “Geovany Andrés Rojas faces narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges for allegedly orchestrating multi-ton cocaine shipments bound for the United States.”

US Attorney Adam Gordon said cocaine from Colombia’s armed groups “fueled the Mexican cartels pumping poison into our communities.”

“The Araña extradition sweeps away a web that starts in the mountains of Putumayo and ends in the brutal, cartel contested plazas of Tijuana.”

— US Attorney Adam Gordon, Southern District of California

From FARC signatory to the negotiating table

The Justice Department said Rojas was a member of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) who signed the 2016 peace agreement before returning to arms, and that he publicly described Comandos de la Frontera as part of the Segunda Marquetalia, a group of former FARC combatants who rearmed after the accord. The US State Department designated the Segunda Marquetalia a foreign terrorist organization on December 1, 2021. According to Infobae, Rojas was born in Cali in 1981, was raised in Putumayo, joined the criminal gang Los Rastrojos in 2008 and the FARC two years later, and was designated a gestor de paz (peace facilitator) in 2017. Rojas has said in interviews that he took up arms again because he was “persecuted and intimidated by the police,” according to Infobae, which also reported that he held gestor de paz status at the time of his February 2025 arrest.

Colombian authorities detained Rojas on February 12, 2025, under an INTERPOL Red Notice based on narcotics offenses. Cambio reported at the time that investigators from the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) took him from a Bogotá hotel after the third round of talks with the government ended. The delegation he belonged to represented the Coordinadora Nacional Ejército Bolivariano (National Coordinating Body of the Bolivarian Army), a structure formed after a split from the Segunda Marquetalia, according to Cambio. Then-Peace Commissioner Otty Patiño arrived at the hotel, questioned the operation and called it a trap set by the prosecutor’s office for the peace negotiations, Cambio reported.

The Corte Suprema de Justicia (Supreme Court of Justice) unanimously approved the extradition in October 2025, the Justice Department said, but Petro suspended it later that year while Rojas took part in a new round of talks between armed groups and the government.

Separate homicide charges in Colombia

On September 15, 2026, Blu Radio reported that the Fiscalía had charged Rojas in connection with 16 homicides committed in 13 armed attacks in Caquetá between 2020 and 2024. Colombian prosecutors allege Rojas ordered killings of people considered collaborators of other illegal groups or of the authorities, as well as peace agreement signatories and social leaders. Four of the victims were social leaders, according to Blu Radio. Rojas did not accept the charges.

The handover

The Justice Department said Rojas was handed over to US officials on the morning of September 25 under heavy security at a Colombian National Police air base in Bogotá, in a send-off attended by De la Espriella, and that he arrived in San Diego at 4:30 p.m. local time, accompanied by DEA and FBI agents. The US Marshals Service assisted with the transfer of custody and with transporting Rojas to the United States, the Justice Department said.

Infobae and El Heraldo placed the handover in Barranquilla rather than Bogotá. According to Infobae, a police convoy left La Picota prison in Bogotá at 3:50 a.m. and took Rojas to CATAM, the military airport of the Colombian Aerospace Force‘s Comando Aéreo de Transporte Militar (Military Air Transport Command). Citing Caracol Radio, Infobae said the transfer included a stop in Barranquilla. Infobae reported that Rojas arrived there at 9:45 a.m. and was taken to the Comando Aéreo de Combate No. 3 (Combat Air Command No. 3), and that De la Espriella was present for the formalities preceding the extradition. El Heraldo reported that officers of the National Police’s INTERPOL unit delivered him to the US Marshals and the DEA there, in a procedure that included a ceremony headed by De la Espriella, and that a chartered Falcon 2000 took off at 10:39 a.m. from the air command in Malambo, Atlántico, near Barranquilla.

Headline photo: Geovany Andrés Rojas, alias “Araña” (center), stands with US law enforcement officials after being extradited from Colombia to the United States. (Photo courtesy US Department of Justice)