Colombian warlord linked to over 1,500 murders and disappearances released from prison

Colombian warlord Salvatore Mancuso was released from prison Wednesday in the South American country after repeatedly asking courts to grant his freedom and promising to collaborate in the government's rapprochement with illegal armed groups.

Mancuso, a leader of a paramilitary group founded by cattle ranchers, was repatriated from the United States in February after serving a 12-year drug trafficking sentence and then spending three years in an immigration detention facility while officials decided whether to send him to Colombia or Italy, where he also is a citizen.

After returning to Colombia, Mancuso appeared before various courts, which eventually notified corrections authorities that they no longer had any pending detention orders for him. The country's courts had found him responsible for more than 1,500 acts of murder and disappearances during one of the most violent periods of Colombia's decades-long armed conflict.