Drug lord is deported to Colombia and walks free after 20 years in U.S. prisons

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — One among Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported again to the South American nation, after serving 25 years of a 30-year jail sentence in the USA.

A short time later, Fabio Ochoa was once more a free man.

Ochoa arrived in Bogota on a deportation flight on Monday afternoon, carrying a modest gray sweatshirt and carrying his private belongings in a plastic bag. After stepping out of the airplane, Ochoa was met by immigration officers in bullet proof vests. There have been no police on web site to detain him.

Immigration officers took his fingerprints and confirmed by a database that Ochoa isn’t wished by Colombian authorities. The nation’s immigration company stated on the social media platform X that Ochoa was “freed so that he could join his family.”

“I was framed,” Ochoa claimed as reporters at Bogota’s El Dorado Airport requested if he regretted his actions.

The previous cartel boss smiled as he hugged his daughter, whom he had not seen in seven years, and stated he would go to Medellin to stay along with his household.

“The nightmare is over” stated Ochoa, 67.

Fabio Ochoa, a former member of Cartel of Medellin, speaks to the media upon his arrival at El Dorado airport, after being deported from the USA, in Bogota, Colombia, on Monday.

Fernando Vergara/AP

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Fernando Vergara/AP

Ochoa and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine began flooding the U.S. within the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties, based on U.S. authorities, to the purpose that in 1987 they have been included within the Forbes Journal’s record of billionaires.

Dwelling in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution middle for the cocaine cartel as soon as headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.

Ochoa was first indicted within the U.S. for his alleged position within the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, however grew to become an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Alongside along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities within the early Nineteen Nineties underneath a deal through which they averted being extradited to the U.S.

The three brothers have been launched from jail in 1996, however Ochoa was arrested once more three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the U.S. in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and greater than 40 folks as a part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.

He was the one suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, leading to his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The opposite defendants obtained a lot lighter jail phrases as a result of most of them cooperated with the federal government.

Ochoa’s identify has pale from well-liked reminiscence as Mexican drug traffickers take middle stage within the world drug commerce.

However the former member of the Medellin cartel was lately depicted within the Netflix sequence Griselda, the place he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for management of Miami’s cocaine market, after which makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, performed by Sofia Vergara.

Ochoa can be depicted within the Netflix sequence Narcos, because the youngest son of an elite Medellin household that’s into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a pointy distinction with Escobar, who got here from extra humble roots.

Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant U.S. lawyer who was on the prosecution staff that convicted Ochoa, stated authorities have been by no means in a position to seize the entire Ochoa household’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the previous mafia boss can have a welcome return residence.

“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie advised The Related Press earlier this month.