Well-known drug lord Fabio Ochoa lands in Colombia after his launch

One of many founders of the Medellín drug cartel has returned to Colombia after serving greater than 20 years in jail in the USA for drug trafficking.

Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, now 67, was deported by the US authorities and landed in Bogota a free man on Monday.

Ochoa was one of many founding members of the infamous cartel and had been a high lieutenant of the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The Medellin cartel dominated the cocaine commerce and waged a violent marketing campaign towards the Colombian state earlier than Escobar’s assassination in 1993.

Upon arrival in Bogota, immigration officers ran Ochoa’s fingerprints towards their database, the nation’s immigration company stated.

Confirming that he’s not needed by the Colombian authorities, he specifies that Ochoa was launched “to reunite together with his household”.

Amid a sea of ​​journalists within the airport terminal, Ochoa was greeted by his family members and hugged his daughter.

In 2001, Ochoa was flown to the USA after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 with round 30 different suspected traffickers.

He had already served a jail sentence in Colombia within the early Nineties for his function as boss of the Medellín cartel. Alongside together with his brothers, he was the primary main trafficker to give up beneath a program that protected cartel members from extradition to the USA in the event that they pleaded responsible to minor crimes in Colombia.

Ochoa and his brothers have been launched from jail in 1996, however Ochoa was rearrested through the so-called Operation Millennium for his involvement in cocaine trafficking in the USA within the late Nineties.

In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced to greater than 30 years in jail by a U.S. courtroom for his involvement within the cartel that introduced a mean of 30 tons of cocaine into the USA every month between 1997 and 1999.

Within the Eighties, he was one of many major operators of Escobar’s Medellin community, a provider at its peak to 80 % of the U.S. cocaine market.

The defunct Medellin cartel, together with the Cali cartel, was one of the vital highly effective and feared drug networks of the Eighties.

His violent bombing and assassination campaigns led to the suspension of extraditions of drug suspects between Colombia and the USA, earlier than resuming in 1997.