DELAY GRANTED IN EXTRADITION OF COLOMBIAN

PHILADELPHIA, April 13 -- The son of a murdered Colombian senator will have to wait another month to find out whether he will be the first Colombian drug-trafficking suspect extradited from the United States under a treaty his father helped to write.  Federal prosecutors sought and were granted a 30-day extension in the case.

Victor Manuel Tafur-Dominguez, 36, a student at Pace University School of Law in White Plains, has insisted that the charges were the result of an innocent and legal financial transaction.  He said today that he intended to post his $350,000 bail with the money the Colombian government accused him of using to help finance a seven-ton shipment of cocaine.  But first, he must make sure the Colombian government has not placed a freeze on the money, so Mr.  Tafur-Dominguez will remain in jail until at least Saturday.

A federal magistrate judge, Charles B.  Smith, granted federal prosecutors the extension because of delays in making sure Colombia had probable cause for the extradition.

Colombian officials ordered Mr.  Tafur-Dominguez detained on Dec.  31.  Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested him on March 4 outside Philadelphia, where his mother lives.

The Colombian authorities accused Mr.  Tafur-Dominguez of financing a million-dollar shipment of cocaine that was seized in Cartagena, Colombia, on Dec.  3, 1998, on a ship bound for Cuba, Jamaica and Spain.  Officials linked Mr.  Tafur-Dominguez to the shipment when several of his personal checks surfaced in the hands of a suspected drug trafficker.  Lawyers for Mr.  Tafur-Dominguez, who faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted, say that the checks were improperly re-endorsed by a currency trader their client had hired to convert the money, a pension payment to his mother, to dollars for deposit abroad.

Mr.  Tafur-Dominguez's father, Senator Donald Rodrigo Tafur, was slain outside his home in 1992.  His family believes he was killed because of his role in drafting the extradition treaty.