MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) – The Mexican government has extradited a top Colombian drug runner to the United States, where he faces charges for trafficking thousands of kilogrammes (pounds) of cocaine, officials said here yesterday.

Ever Villafane Martinez, who escaped a Colombian prison in 2001 and spent the next seven years liaising between international drug cartels before his 2008 arrest in Mexico, was handed to US authorities on Friday, the Attorney General’s office said in a statement.

Villafane Martinez faces trial in Florida for criminal associations and money laundering. He was a top player in a cartel that sent “thousands of kilogrammes from Colombia to the United States”, Mexican officials said.

He was extradited to the United States along with a Mexican man accused of murder and Mexican drug smuggler Oscar Alonso Candelaria Escajeda, accused by a Texas court of intent to distribute marijuana and cocaine in the United States.

The extraditions come days after the United States, Mexico and Colombia pledged continued cooperation in the increasingly violent drug war, which has left more than 7,000 people dead since the start of last year.

At the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad over the weekend US President Barack Obama backed regional efforts to combat the drug trade.

Obama has been more willing than his predecessor George W Bush to acknowledge that – as the world’s largest consumer of cocaine – the United States shares responsibility for Mexican gang activity.

Mexico has launched a high-stakes military crackdown involving tens of thousands of troops in a bid to crush the cartels.