By IANS
Bogota : Colombian authorities in an operation against the country’s drug cartels seized a large cache of arms and ammunition from the gang of drug lord Wilber Varela, slain last January in Venezuela, the police said Wednesday.
The cache comprising 63 rifles and 124 cartridges was found stashed in a cattle ranch near Andalucia, a town in the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, according to the police, the Spanish news agency EFE reported Wednesday.
The administrator of the property was arrested.
The force said in a communiqué that the rifles were covered, one metre underground, with wood and plastic, in a feed storehouse for livestock.
The police also seized two shotguns discovered in a room of the house, they said, adding that the arsenal was the property of “Los Rastrojos” (The Weeds), Varela’s armed gang.
The drug trafficker, who went by the alias of “Jabon” (Soap) and was a leader of the Norte del Valle gang, was found shot dead at the end of January in a tourist area of the Venezuelan state of Merida.