The US had offered a $5 million reward for the capture of the twins [AFP]

Officials said on Wednesday that fingerprints showed the dead man was Victor Manuel Mejia, also wanted for extradition to the US on drug charges, rather than Miguel Angel Mejia.
 
"At the moment he was shot by the police, Victor Mejia was carrying documents of his twin brother," Colombian police said in a statement.
 
"This was a strategy they often used to confuse even the members of their own security teams."
 
Confusion

Police initially thought they had killed Miguel Angel Mejia because they had found documents belonging to him in the ranch where the raid took place, Oscar Naranjo, a national police chief, said on Wednesday.

The alleged drug lord's identity was later confirmed by a fingerprint check to be that of Victor Manuel Mejia, his twin brother, Naranjo said.

He also said that the police were looking for the surviving twin. "We are working intensely on his search," Naranjo said.

The brothers reportedly ran an operation called Los Mellizos (The Twins), and were considered to be Colombia's top drug traffickers.

Two members of Mejia's security unit were also killed in the operation, in which police detained three others.

On the run

Mejia and his brother Victor allegedly started off trafficking cocaine before joining Colombia's paramilitary groups.

When the paramilitaries surrendered under a government brokered deal, the two brothers went on the run.

A US court issued extradition warrants for the two in 2004, claiming at the time they had shipped almost 70 tonnes of cocaine in just two years.

Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, has called on police to bring down the Mejia organisation, which is thought to contain dozens of smugglers and hired killers.

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