Omaira Rojas, her nom de guerre Comandante Sonia (also referred to as Nayibe Rojas), is the sixth FARC rebel to be extradited to the US ?the fourth in two years–for narco-trafficking and the first woman. Reuters called her the “business brains behind [the group],” while AP contended that she ran the group’s drug trafficking business. She was escorted to the US by US DEA agents on March 9, 2005.

Sonia had been a member of the FARC for 20 years until her capture in February 2004. She managed the group’s finances as the treasurer in the Southern Bloc?she knows the inner workings of the finances of the group that could be crucial to disbanding it–and was highly successful in gathering ‘revolutionary taxes’ and other extortion efforts, which are notorious in that region. The Southern Bloc remains the most lucrative financial area in all of Colombia for cocaine, reigning in $600 million in 2003. Authorities, according to the Miami Herald, feared an assassination attempt against Sonia by the FARC before she was extradited because of her value to the group, so she wore a bulletproof vest and helmet, was held on a naval ship, was sent to a maximum security prison, and had her food monitored for poisons. The group denied wanting to off her; however, Colombian authorities allegedly uncovered a plot to have her killed in prison.