Colombian authorities released former Medellin cartel boss Carlos Lehder on Monday after a judge ruled that a drug trafficking sentence was issued in Colombia in Colombia.
Lehder, one of the original “cocaine cowboys” and Pablo Escobar’s The criminal partner was arrested shortly after flying from Germany to Bogota Airport, and immigration officials said he was still wanted for drug trafficking and weapons smuggling.
Lehder became the first Colombian drug trafficker to be extradited to the United States after being arrested at a party on the ranch.
The former drug trafficker was extradited to the United States in 1987, where he was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison. In 2020, Lehder was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence. He is Deported to Germanyhe is also a citizen.
Colombia migration via x/anthouters via Reuters
Ryder has not returned to Colombia since his extradition to the United States. His attorney, Sondra Macollins, said he was trying to visit relatives when he arrived Friday.
“He is recovering from cancer and suffering from hypertension problems,” Macollins told Columbia’s Blu Radio, saying. “We’re talking about people who have spent years in black cells.”
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Colombian authorities were found guilty of drug trafficking while serving their sentence in U.S. prisons in 1995. Under Colombian law, the cartel owner was sentenced to 24 years in prison in Colombia, meaning his sentence expires in 2019.
Lehder, the son of a German immigrant who arrived in Colombia in the 1920s, began his crime career when he lived with relatives in New York City in the 1970s.
He used his connections and English knowledge to open up the cocaine market for Medellin Cartel and became a key ally of his boss Escobar. He was portrayed as a wild, cruel criminal in the Netflix series “Narcos” where he established a cocaine transit center on a private island in the Bahamas, known as the Norman Cay, which became a key stopover for cocaine flights.
In Colombia, he owns a luxurious country hotel called Posada Alemana, which is shrouded in its grounds with lions and on the statue of Lehder’s favorite musician John Lennon.
In the United States, Lehder was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, but reduced his sentence by providing U.S. investigators with information used to prosecute Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
As CBS News reported in 2015, Lehder and Noriega’s prosecutions were helped by intelligence Carlos Toroa former senior cartel member turned into a secret DEA agent who possesses many false identities.
Lehder’s release on Monday comes months after another key operator of the Medellin Cocaine Cartel was sent out of U.S. prisons. US Bureau of Prisons Records Fabio Ochoa Vásquez released After completing 30 years in prison, 25 years in December.
According to U.S. authorities, Ochoa, 67, and his brother accumulated so much wealth when they began to flood the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s that in 1987 they were included in Forbes’ list of billionaires. Ochoa lives in Miami and once led by Escobar, Cocaine Cartel runs a distribution center.
