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One of the founders of the Medellín drug cartel has returned to Colombia after serving more than 20 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking.
Fabio Ochoa Vazquez, now 67, was deported by the US government and landed in Bogota on Monday free.
Ochoa was one of the founders of the notorious cartel and was a senior lieutenant of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The Medellín cartel dominated the cocaine trade and waged a brutal campaign against the Colombian state before Escobar was assassinated in 1993.
Upon arrival in Bogota, immigration officials ran Ochoa’s fingerprints into their database, the country’s immigration agency said.
Confirming that Colombian authorities were not looking for him, it said Ochoa had been released “to be reunited with his family”.
Among the sea of reporters at the airport terminal, Ochoa was met by relatives and hugged his daughter.
In 2001, Ochoa was extradited to the United States after being arrested in Colombia in 1999, along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.
He had already served a prison sentence 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 major trafficker to surrender under a program that protected cartel members from extradition to the United States if they pleaded guilty to minor offenses 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 United States in the late 1990s.
In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced by a US court to more than 30 years in prison for his involvement in a cartel that brought an average of 30 tons of cocaine into the US every month between 1997 and 1999.
During the 1980s, he was one of the main operators in Escobar’s Medellin ring, supplying 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 a suspension of extradition of drug suspects between Colombia and the United States, before resuming in 1997.
