Official Confirms Skeleton Is Warlord's

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Resolving one of the mysteries in a brother-against-brother story that has transfixed Colombia, the nation's chief federal prosecutor confirmed Monday that a skeleton dug from a shallow grave belonged to warlord Carlos Castano, the founder of the far-right paramilitaries who mysteriously disappeared two years ago.

"The federal prosecution has the full identification that this is Castano," said Mario Iguaran, pointing to a 99.99 percent match between Castano's DNA and that of the skeleton, which was uncovered in northern Colombia on Friday after a paramilitary gunman who confessed to killing Castano in April 2004 led investigators to the scene.

The federal prosecutor accuses Carlos's older brother Vicente of ordering the killing, allegedly because he feared his younger sibling would turn over information on his drug-trafficking activities in exchange for leniency in negotiations with the United States.

The government is demanding that Vicente surrender and has threatened to withdraw benefits of the peace process Vicente himself helped negotiate _ and Carlos helped initiate _ including suspension of extradition and prison time limited to eight years.

As one of the founders of Colombia's far-right paramilitaries, for two decades Carlos Castano operated at the center of the country's underworld and civil war, becoming one of the main protagonists in shaping this South American nation's modern history.