BOGOTA – One of Colombia’s most wanted drug traffickers turned himself in to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Aruba, authorities said on Monday.

Javier Antonio Calle Serna, 43, turned himself in last Friday and was flown to New York to face charges, the deputy director of Colombia’s National Police, Gen. Jose Roberto Leon Riaño, told a press conference in Bogota.

“We don’t know the details of the surrender,” he said.

Calle Serna and his brother Luis Enrique – who remains at large – ran a drug smuggling outfit that relied for muscle on Los Rastrojos, a group of demobilized right-wing paramilitaries.

Leon said that Javier Calle Serna’s career in the world of drugs began in the 1970s.

By the 1990s, Calle Serna was the top lieutenant of kingpin Wilber Varela, but the two fell out after the latter aligned himself with Daniel “El Loco” Barrera.

Colombian authorities posted rewards of 5 billion pesos ($2.84 million) each for the Calle Serna brothers and Barrera.

Leon noted that Varon died along with one of his bodyguards in January 2008 in his hideout in Venezuela at the hands of assassins hired by Javier Calle Serna.

Calle Serna is also considered to be the intellectual author of the murder of Helmer Herrera, the former capo of the defunct Cali cartel, who was shot to death in November 1998 in a prison in Bogota. EFE