Colombia extradited 14 paramilitary warlords to the United States on Tuesday on drug-related charges in a surprise move that brought praise from Washington but raised fears of justice thwarted for thousands of victims.

The extradited include Salvatore Mancuso and most other leaders of Colombia’s illegal right-wing militias _ notorious figures blamed for some of modern Colombia’s worst atrocities, including the deaths of at least 10,000 people.

Victims families fear that once the warlords are in U.S. prisons, it will be more difficult to get them to confess to human rights violations and reveal details of their connections to Colombian politicians.

But U.S. officials promised Tuesday to cooperate with Colombian prosecutors, and President Alvaro Uribe said any international assets seized from the warlords by the United States would go to compensate the victims.

“It’s a great day,” U.S. drug czar John Walters told The Associated Press. He said the U.S. justice system is “far less likely for them to be able to attack or intimidate or corrupt.”

Uribe said the militia bosses kept committing crimes from prison, failed to “duly cooperate” with prosecutors and neglected “to compensate victims _ hiding assets and delaying their delivery.”

“The country has been generous with them but the government can’t tolerate a relapse into crime,” he said in a national address.

Under a 2003 peace pact, the militia leaders were supposed to confess all their crimes, surrender ill-gotten riches and halt illegal activities in exchange for reduced jail terms and protection from extradition.

Victims’ relatives fear it will be more difficult to obtain confessions and cross-examine the warlords, meaning their rich and powerful accomplices can now more easily evade justice.

Some 31 members of Colombia’s 268-seat congress, almost all of them close allies of President Alvaro Uribe, are in jail for allegedly colluding with the paramilitary bosses. Another 30 are under investigation.

Colombian police video showed the sober-looking warlords, some handcuffed and wearing bulletproof vests, arriving from prison in armored cars before dawn for their flights to the United States. Eleven of them arrived in Florida on an unmarked U.S. government plane and were led away by drug enforcement agents. The others were flown directly to New York or Tampa.

Mancuso’s United Defense Forces of Colombia was declared a terrorist group in 2001 by the United States, but the U.S. indictments are focused on drugs, not massacres or rights violations. The charges range from drug trafficking and conspiracy to money laundering.

The extradited bosses _ to be tried in Washington, Miami, Tampa, Fla., New York and Houston _ also include Diego Murillo (also known as “Don Berna”) and Rodrigo Tovar (also known as Jorge 40). Last week, Colombia also extradited a paramilitary boss for the first time _ Carlos Mario Jimenez, also known as Macaco, who was allegedly kept running drugs from a Colombian prison.

The U.S. Justice Department said it agreed with Colombia’s request to seek less than life sentences.

Human rights groups worry the militia bosses will negotiate reduced U.S. prison terms and evade responsibility for their most heinous crimes. “The burden is on the U.S. government to ensure that the victims will have their day in court,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch-Americas.

The paramilitaries killed at least 10,000 people, according to chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran. Victims’ rights groups say at least 30,000 were killed.

Formed as self-defense forces by wealthy ranchers in the 1980s to counter leftist rebel extortion and kidnapping, the militias seized much of the Caribbean coast in the late 1990s, killing thousands and stealing millions of acres of land while wresting control of lucrative drug-trafficking routes.

Some 50 warlords and more than 31,000 fighters agreed to compensate their victims when they demobilized as part of the peace pact, and at least 160,000 people have registered as victims with the chief prosecutor, said Ana Teresa Bernal of Redepaz, an independent group that helps victims of Colombia’s conflict.

So far, none have received reparations.

Some warlords including Mancuso have implicated politicians and prominent businesses that benefited from their takeover. Now, “they’ve taken away all the witnesses,” said independent investigator Claudia Lopez, who fears Colombia’s criminal cases against politicians will end.

The paramilitary chiefs have valuable information because they “acted with politicians, cattlemen and large landowners and clearly represented a danger for their accomplices,” said Ivan Cepeda, head of Colombia’s main victims’ rights group.

Mancuso, for example, told the AP in a prison interview that all banana exporters paid the militias three cents per crate. U.S.-based Chiquita Brands has acknowledged paying the terrorist group, for which it was fined US$25 million (euro19 million) by the U.S. Justice Department last year.

The arrested politicians include the president’s second cousin and political intimate, former Sen. Mario Uribe.

Walters praised President Uribe for his willingness to “investigate everything, wherever it leads even when there are allegations against a family member ...That’s what rule of law means.”

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Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera and Tatiana Guerrero in Bogota and Curt Anderson in Miami contributed to this report.