Bogotá (AFP) – Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, a Medellin Cartel co-founder and former lieutenant to notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, was deported to Colombia on Monday after serving a long US prison sentence. The 67-year-old, who is no longer a wanted man in his home country, landed at Bogota airport, where he was mobbed by reporters.
Ochoa was released from prison in the United States on December 3 after spending more than two decades behind bars. In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced to more than 30 years and a $25,000 fine for being part of an organization that brought an average of 30 tons of cocaine into the country each month between 1997 and 1999. Escobar, once the most wanted drug lord on the planet, had already been killed by the Colombian police a decade earlier.
Of the founders of what became the world’s largest drug organization, only Ochoa and Carlos Lehder — known as “Rambo” — were extradited to the United States. Lehder was released in 2020 and traveled to Germany because of his dual nationality.
Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in 1990 under a special law issued by the government of then-president Cesar Gaviria offering reduced sentences and non-extradition for criminals who gave in, confessed their crimes, and betrayed their partners. He was released in 1996 after serving a sentence of almost six years in a high-security prison near Medellin.
Ochoa, however, returned to trafficking and was arrested again in October 1999 as part of a multinational operation that led to the capture of dozens of alleged drug lords. Following his extradition in 2001, several cartel members testified against him after reaching a plea deal with US prosecutors. Despite the deaths or arrests of the Medellin Cartel leaders, Colombia remains the world’s largest exporter of cocaine.
© 2024 AFP
