July 20 (Reuters) - Here are some facts on Colombia's top drug traffickers following the arrest and extradition of several top cartel leaders in recent years: * Diego Montoya is from western Colombia, near the city of Cali, and is on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. A leader of the violent Norte del Valle cartel, Montoya is notorious for his bloody battles against rival gangs for control of smuggling routes leading to the Pacific coast. Known as "Don Diego", Montoya is accused of producing tonnes of cocaine for the U.S. market and is protected by right-wing paramilitaries. The U.S. government has offered $5 million for information leading to his arrest. * Vicente Castano is a paramilitary chief who operates on the Atlantic coast and is accused of running major cocaine smuggling operations. He refused to turn himself in under a peace deal with right-wing militias that he helped negotiate. Prosecutors accuse him of killing his brother Carlos, another militia leader, in 2004 because he feared he was going to reveal information to U.S. authorities about paramilitary drug smuggling networks. * The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrilla army has become a major player in the drugs trade in the past decade. U.S. officials say the FARC is involved in growing coca, processing it into cocaine in jungle laboratories and smuggling it out of the country. Rebel leaders also buy impure base cocaine from peasants and sell it on at a profit to drug cartels. The FARC has been at war with the government for more than 40 years and has 17,000 fighters, controlling wide swathes of the countryside. The cocaine trade is a key source of funding its communist insurgency. * Miguel Angel Mejia and Victor Manuel Mejia, known as "Los Mellizos" or "The Twins", allegedly started criminal careers as low-level employees of the Norte del Valle cartel. They rose through the ranks and formed their own gangs as the cartel's top bosses were arrested and extradited to the United States. Experts in maritime drug smuggling, the brothers won turf wars with other former mid-level traffickers and operate throughout Colombia. Authorities have discovered cash stashes containing tens of millions of dollars linked to the brothers.
