U.S. court sets January 2027 trial for alleged drug kingpin Sebastián Marset

01 July 2026 , 21:16

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A U.S. District Judge in Virginia on Wednesday set a trial date for early 2027 for accused Southern Cone drug trafficker Sebastián Marset, rejecting attempts by prosecutors to push it back to March, a year after his arrest.

Marset’s lawyer Robert Feitel asked the judge to hold a trial for Marset as early as November, a move prosecutors complained would not give them time to line up visas for foreign witnesses. District Judge Rossie D. Alston split the difference and set a date for January 11, 2027, anticipating two or more weeks for what he deemed a complex case.

The move puts pressure on prosecutor Anthony T. Aminoff, who heads the district’s narcotics and money laundering for the Justice Department. He told the judge he needed to obtain visas for law enforcement partners from Belgium and Colombia who participated in the investigation, which the court heard Wednesday actually began in 2021.

Aminoff anticipated witnesses from several foreign countries, requiring translators and court-recognized translations of documents, texts, emails and other communication. Some witnesses will have to get authorized by their own government to come testify. He described it as “just a logistically complex trial effort.”

Feitel, who just joined as Marset’s new defense attorney, was not sympathetic, noting he himself had been a federal prosecutor for international drug cases and did not find Aminoff’s argument for delaying the trial convincing.

“If Mr. Marset had his way, we’d go to trial tomorrow,” he told the judge

A Uruguayan national with multiple alleged aliases, Marset was on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted list and had a reward of $2 million for his arrest. He was captured in a raid in southern Bolivia on March 13th and immediately extradited to the United States. His defense team signaled that the extradition itself would be challenged in motions or during the trial.

Marset was indicted on money laundering charges, but late last week the court docket revealed a new superseding indictment that added more serious drug trafficking and narcoterrorism charges.

In an unusual handwritten letter to Judge Alston that also appeared on the court docket Sunday, Marset argued he was denied fundamental rights, that DEA agents were trying to extort his family to get at $4 million in cryptocurrency holdings and that he was subject to an “irregular rendition that violates international treaties.” He told the judge he had fired his lawyers for not carrying out his defense wishes.

At the end of Wednesday’s hearing, the judge asked Marset if he was happy with his legal team.

“With my new attorneys, yes,” the wiry Marset said through his Spanish-language interpreter.

Prompted as to any other questions, Marset, wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit reading Alexandria Inmate, asked, “Did you receive my letter?”

Judge Alston said he had but did not read it because he considered it inappropriate “ex parte communication” outside the norm of judicial proceedings.

While the trial isn’t until January, prosecutor Aminoff told the judge that Marset’s defense was “telegraphing pre-trial litigation” in which the judge would have to rule on numerous motions.

One was filed last week, seeking to dismiss the original money laundering charges on the grounds that it occurred outside the United States and thus should be prosecuted where the crime occurred and not in Virginia. Judge Ralston said he intended to handle numerous motions at a time and was unlikely to rule on them one by one.