Bogota (AP) – Colombia’s most wanted drug lord was cowering like a dog under a palm tree when he was captured Wednesday in a jungle raid involving hundreds of police officers, the defense minister said.

Daniel Rendon Herrera, a far-right warlord known as “Don Mario,” was taken in shackles to the capital to await possible extradition to the United States.

Operating in a banana-growing region bordering Panama, he commanded a private army of hundreds and shipped some 100 tons of cocaine to the United States, authorities said.

President Alvaro Uribe described Rendon, 43, as “one of the most feared drug traffickers in the world.” National police director Gen. Oscar Naranjo said his organization is believed to have committed 3,000 murders in the last 18 months.

The bulk of those killings occurred in turf battles with other drug lords, police said, including former lieutenants of 14 paramilitary leaders Colombia extradited to the United States last year to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.

As has always occurred in Colombia’s drug underworld, Rendon ascended in power as other kingpins were captured or extradited.

Naranjo said that when a police dragnet tightened on Rendon earlier this year, he offered his assassins $1,000 for each police officer they killed, in hopes of evading arrest.

Colombian officials had offered a reward of up to $2 million for information leading to the capture of the man whose organization, controlling key smuggling routes to Central America, is believed to have been working closely with Mexican traffickers.

“This guy put bounties on the heads of government officials, so he was Public Enemy No. 1 in Colombia,” said Thomas Harrigan, operations chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The U.S. wants to put him on trial in New York on charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine in the United States, outlined in a bare-bones, four-page federal indictment filed last July and unsealed Wednesday. Such extraditions can take months.

Some 300 police officers joined the raid in the northern Colombian jungle town of San Jose de Apartado.

Uribe said nine months of patient planning and intelligence work went into the operation, which he called the latest proof of Colombia’s skill in combatting organized crime.

At the time of his capture, Rendon had been cowering “like a dog” under a palm tree for two days, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said with evident satisfaction.