Co-founder of drug cartel, released from US jail

Thursday, June 18th: The man who co-founded the notorious drug cartel with Pablo Escobar has arrived in Germany after being released from a US prison. The group was known as the Medellin Drug Cartel.

Carlos Lehder, a 70-year-old German of Colombian descent, became famous for setting up a drug trafficking den on a private island in the Bahamas. Carlos Lehder was arrested in Colombia in 1987 and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to 135 years in prison in addition to life imprisonment.

However, the sentence was later reduced when he agreed to co-operate with the authorities. Lehder’s daughter, Monica, told the Colombian magazine Simana that Lehder had cancer and that because she had no relatives in Germany, a charity there would take care of her.

Lehder, with the help of corrupt local officials, set up a drug den on the island of Normans K, from where drugs were flown by plane to the coastal state of Florida in the United States. The journey from the island to Florida was 210 miles.

He was arrested on a farm in Colombia. The group’s leader, Pablo Escobar, allegedly informed the authorities about them. Lehder was arrested and extradited to the United States. In those days, the United States was leading a campaign against Colombian drug cartels.

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Carlos Lehder’s sentence was commuted for testifying against Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega had close ties to the Medellin cartel and allowed the group to smuggle cocaine through Panama.

After testifying, Lehder was granted protection by Florida authorities. He was granted German citizenship by his father, who had emigrated from Germany to Colombia. According to the German news agency Deutsche Welle, Lehder had never been to Germany before and there would be no legal action against him because he had served his sentence in the United States.

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His lawyer, Oscar Erjavi, told the Associated Press that Lehder did not want to return to Colombia and that German authorities had helped him settle in Berlin. Lehder’s daughter said she flew from New York to Frankfurt, Germany, on a regular passenger plane. “I have seen him after 17 years. Despite his illness, I am satisfied that he is well.

According to German media, Lehder was accompanied by two American officials who handed him over to German authorities. An estimated 80 percent of the cocaine that came to the United States in the 1970’s and 1980’s was smuggled by the Medellin cartel.

The TV series “Narcos” about the emerging drug cartel Medellin Cartel, a partnership between Pablo Escobar and Carlos Lehder, also gained much popularity. Pablo Escobar was killed in a 1993 police encounter in Colombia. Authorities tried to arrest him and extradite him to the United States, but he resisted until the last minute.

Pablo Escobar, the world’s biggest drug lord, hails from the Latin American country of Colombia. For this reason, his group was called the Medellin Cartel. Twenty-seven years ago, Time magazine in the United States called Medellin the most dangerous city in the world, where drug lords lived like princes and the massacre of judges and police officers was commonplace. The city was raided by security forces on a daily basis and most of the civilians went missing without any trace.