(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-12 01:47

BOGOTA, Sept 11  - He is charged with running one of the world's fiercest drug cartels, but Colombian soldiers finally caught up with Diego "Lord of War" Montoya cowering in his underpants in a shallow hole hidden by a pile of leaves.

Colombian army soldiers escort drug trafficker Diego Montoya after his arrest in Bogota September 10, 2007. [Reuters]

"I lost," Montoya told his captors after a helicopter ferrying special forces troops swept into the farm where he was snatched along with his mother and other family members after three months of cat-and-mouse with authorities.

His arrest on Monday was a precipitous fall for one of the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives.

Troops tracked him to his hiding hole by following the distinct tracks he left due to a limp caused by a car accident a few years ago.

"Someone saw the leaves moving and underneath there they found Don Diego," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told local radio. "His first reaction, like all mafia do, was try to bribe his captors, offering them $5 million each."

Colombia said Montoya's capture was the biggest blow to the drug trade in years, perhaps since police shot dead infamous Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar in 1993 and later imprisoned leaders of the Cali cartel.

Montoya is charged with running the Norte del Valle cartel, which is responsible for as much as 70 percent of the cocaine reaching U.S. streets, and his assassins were behind 1,500 murders in a war with rivals for control of Pacific coast drug routes, officials said.

U.S. authorities want him tried for cocaine smuggling, money laundering and for torturing and murdering an FBI witness. Santos said Montoya should be extradited to Miami when courts complete paperwork in a couple of months.

His capture comes amid a scandal in which high level military officers were arrested to face charges that they took bribes to protect Montoya and provide him with army and navy intelligence to escape capture and ship out drugs undetected.

Those arrests helped to bring him down, officials said.

Squads of troops were flown into other areas before the raid to distract possible informants. When the helicopter hit the Montoya farm, he was caught so much by surprise his pants and wallet were left behind in a bedroom as he fled.

"This is the end that awaits all of them," Army Commander Gen. Mario Montoya said. "It was a like a movie, but a movie with a happy ending."