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Drug lord Fabio Ochoa walks free in Colombia after 20 years in US prisons


One of Colombia’s infamous drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported back to the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.

A short while later, Fabio Ochoa was again a free man.

Ochoa arrived in Bogota’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a gray sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag. After stepping out of the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in bullet proof vests. There were no police on site to detain him.

Colombia’s national immigration agency promptly posted a brief statement on the social media platform X, saying Ochoa was “freed so that he could join his family” after immigration officials took his fingerprints and confirmed through a database that he is not wanted by Colombian authorities.

Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to US authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires.

Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.

Coca fields are seen in Tibu municipality, Norte de Santander department, Colombia, on October 29, 2022. - "The government is persecuting us", deplores one of the more than a thousand coca growers gathered on the Colombian-Venezuelan border. AFP listened to their claims in the face of the new leftist government headed by the world's largest cocaine producer. "Because we are coca leaf collectors, they brand us as guerrillas, as drug traffickers, as criminals", complains Alexander Contreras (36), an expert scraper or stripper of the plant, which is the raw material for cocaine.

Ochoa was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided being extradited to the US.

The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.

He was the only suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.

Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.

But the former member of the Medellin cartel was recently depicted in the Netflix series “Griselda,” where he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market, and then makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, played by Sofia Vergara.

Ochoa is also depicted in the Netflix series “Narcos,” as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family that is into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.

Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the former mafia boss will have a welcome return home.

“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told the Associated Press earlier this month.

Malroux:
One is already the president of another country.

Thundafireseun:
If e easy make ur papa go do am

Malroux:
Even as I no mention any name?

Thundafireseun:
Give honour to who honour is due .,…

If it’s easy to turn from a drug lord to a president everybody will do it ….

Including you….. don’t lie

Malroux:
Who do you think I was referring to?

Thundafireseun:
Ask me again

Thundafireseun:
If e easy make ur papa go do am

Larryfest:
The dreaded extradition Pablo Escobar feared most that made him said "better a grave in Colombia than a prison cell in USA " is what Ochoa has just completed and will henceforth be free to continue living his life while enjoying his numerous hidden funds.

Pablo was just too stubborn....

Malroux:
Who do you think I was referring to?

MondayOmoAdugbo:
Legend

Racoon:
Festus Keyamo Defends Tinubu From Drug Trafficking, Says Tinubu Mistakenly Shared Flats With Drug Lords

The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Mr Festus Keyamo, has distanced the All Progressive Congress presidential candidata, Bola Tinubu, from being a drug baron who was involved in the traffic of narcotics in the United States.

Keyamo, who also doubles as APC Presidential Campaign spokesperson, noted that the former governor of Lagos State only shared a block of flat with drug barons about 30 years ago in the US.

His reaction is coming following documents of a Chicago District Court indicting and convicting Tinubu of drug dealings and money laundering in 1993.

The document which emerged online two days ago, described APC standard-bearer as a drug baron, adding that Tinubu entered a plea bargain, leading to the forfeiture of his assets to US authorities in 1993

It was also pointed out that Tinubu forfeited the sum of $460, 000 dollars in his bank account at First Heritage Bank to the US government.

Speaking on Wednesday on Channels TV, Mr Keyamo dismissed such claims, insisting that Tinubu was linked to drug peddlers who were his neighbours.

He said: “What happened was that Tinubu went to open an account. The address which he used in opening the account was the address used by these people. I think some blocks of flats. Maybe, he was happy to be in that block of flats too.

“So, they now link it that the other people they were investigating for narcotics are in the same address used by Asiwaju to open that account.’’

https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/?.
 
U.S. court judgement indicts Tinubu for drug trafficking

https://www.google.com/amp/s/businessday.ng/amp/news/article/u-s-court-judgement-indicts-tinubu-for-drug-trafficking/

US Court Releases Documents Linking Tinubu to Largescale Drug Peddling


https://fij.ng/article/us-court-releases-documents-linking-tinubu-to-largescale-drug-peddling/

Morbeta11:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw6UCmEGOts?si=VMSPkj_Ekm-dk7LQ
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/23/americas/colombia-drug-lord-fabio-ochoa-deported-intl-latam/index.html

Thundafireseun:
If e easy make ur papa go do am

Thundafireseun:
If e easy make ur papa go do am

Thundafireseun:
If e easy make ur papa go do am

Malroux:
One is already the president of another country.

Thundafireseun:
If e easy make ur papa go do am