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One of the founders of the Medellin drug cartel has returned to Colombia after serving more than 20 years in prison in the US for drug trafficking.
Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, now 67 years old, was deported by the US government and arrived in Bogota free on Monday.
Ochoa was one of the founders of the notorious cartel and served as the head of drug lord Pablo Escobar’s lieutenant.
The Medellin cartel controlled the cocaine trade and waged a violent campaign against Colombia before Escobar’s assassination in 1993.
Upon arrival in Bogota, immigration officials ran Ochoa’s fingerprints through their database, the immigration agency said.
Confirming that he was not wanted by the Colombian authorities, it said that Ochoa had been released “to be reunited with his family”.
Amidst the press at the airport, Ochoa was greeted by his family members and hugged his daughter.
In 2001, Ochoa was extradited to the US after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 along with about 30 other suspected traffickers.
He was previously imprisoned in Colombia in the early 90s for his role as one of the bosses of the Medellin cartel. Along with his brothers, he was the first trafficker to surrender under a program that protected cartel members from extradition to the US if they confessed to minor crimes in Colombia.
Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again during the so-called Millennium operation for 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 participating in a cartel that brought in about 30 tons of cocaine every month between 1997 and 1999.
In the 1980s, he was one of the most successful in Escobar’s Medellin ring, which sold more than 80% of the US cocaine market.
The defunct Medellin cartel, along with the Cali cartel, was one of the most powerful and dangerous drug networks of the 1980s.
His violent campaign of bombings and assassinations led to the suspension of suspected drug trafficking between Colombia and the US, before it resumed in 1997.
