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25-12-2024
COLOMBIA/ BOGOTÁ: SPAIN: One of the founders of the Medellin drug cartel has returned to Colombia after serving more than 20 years in jail in the US for drug trafficking.
Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, now 67 years old, was deported by the US government and landed in Bogota on Monday a free man.
Ochoa was one of the founding members of the notorious cartel and had been a senior lieutenant to infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The Medellin cartel dominated the cocaine trade and waged a violent campaign against the Colombian state before Escobar was killed in 1993.
On his arrival in Bogota, immigration officials ran Ochoa’s fingerprints through their database, the country’s immigration agency said. Confirming that he is not wanted by Colombian authorities, it said that Ochoa was freed “to be reunited with his family”.
Amid a sea of reporters in the airport terminal, Ochoa was greeted by his relatives and hugged his daughter.
In 2001, Ochoa was flown to the US after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.
He had already served a jail sentence in Colombia in the early 90s for his role as one of bosses of the Medellin cartel. Along with his brothers, he was the first major trafficker to surrender under a program that protected cartel members from extradition to the US if they pleaded guilty to minor offences in Colombia.
Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested once again during the so-called Millennium operation over his involvement in the cocaine smuggling business in the US in the late 1990s.
In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced to more than 30 years in a US court for his involvement in the cartel that brought an average of 30 tonnes of cocaine into the US each month between 1997 and 1999.
During the 1980s, he was one of the top operators in Escobar’s Medellin ring, a supplier in its prime of 80% of the US cocaine market.
The defunct Medellin cartel, along with the Cali cartel, was one of the most powerful and feared drug networks of the 1980s.
Its violent campaigns of bombings and assassinations led to extraditions of drugs suspects between Colombia and the US to be suspended, before being resumed in 1997.
In 1991, Ochoa Vasquez and his brothers turned themselves in to Colombian authorities, hoping to avoid “open war” with the government through a plea deal. They served short terms together in Colombia, and were released by 1996. At the time, Colombia and the US did not have an extradition treaty and the brothers secured a promise that they would not be extradited in the future as part of the plea deal.
After release, he was arrested again in 1999, and accused of contributing knowledge and receiving payments for cocaine shipments. Despite a lobbying and press campaign, he was extradited to the United States in September 2001, and convicted in 2003 of trafficking, conspiracy and distribution of cocaine in the US He was sentenced to 30 years in a US federal prison.
After his imprisonment, the Colombian government seized properties worth several million US dollars from him, including several farms and businesses. On May 1, 2020, US federal prosecutors objected to a bid for Ochoa Vasquez to be released five years before the completion of his 30 year prison sentence. He was released on December 3, 2024 and was deported to Colombia on December 23. (Int’l News Desk)
