by David Fisher
The question was, How did they find us? What happened to the protection Pablo had paid for? When something went wrong there were always questions Pablo wanted answered. We learned two weeks later that a drug trafficker from Cali had gone from the meeting at the Circle and called someone in the government, believing he could win a guarantee that he would never be extradited by informing on Pablo. And Pablo also discovered that the raid had been directed by Colonel Casadiego Torrado, who Pablo had considered a friend and had been paying $50,000 a month for cooperation and information. But maybe this colonel figured that by capturing or killing Pablo Escobar he could ensure his career. Pablo sent him a message: “Now you are against me and you know what I think about that.” For his own protection the colonel was transferred to another city and worked there. And eventually he was promoted to general and rose to a position of power in the Colombian police. Right at that time there wasn’t too much we could do anyway, we were so busy. A few years after Pablo’s death Torrado got killed near Cali, but I think that was because he got caught up in his own problems.
After this Pablo changed his way of doing business. Instead of keeping colonels and generals on the regular monthly payroll, he informed them he would pay them only for the information they provided.
On the night of the raid at the Circle, at exactly the same time in Madrid, police had arrested Jorge Ochoa, the Cali cartel’s Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, and a third man who was a friend of theirs. When I had left I’d given the key to my apartment to Jorge and told him to use it if he needed it. But it was their own actions that attracted attention, so when Torrado informed on them the police knew where to find them.
They were put in prison. The United States requested that Spain extradite Jorge Ochoa to the United States for his participation in drug trafficking. Colombia also officially requested his extradition for the crime of smuggling fighting bulls into our country from Spain. This created a serious problem for the Spanish government about where to send him. If Ochoa was sent to the U.S.—where he had been indicted three times—he would spend the remainder of his life in jail there; if he went to Colombia the penalty would be much less. The Ochoa family hired lawyers in Spain and America and spent twenty months fighting extradition to the U.S. It was well known in Europe and South America that the decision to return Jorge to Colombia was made by Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González. Ochoa was sentenced to twenty months in prison in Colombia, but the power of the traffickers proved enough and eventually he put up a bond for $11,500 and walked free.
Pablo and I, the Ochoa brothers, Carlos Lehder, Gacha, the Mexican, we had all become wanted men. Now whenever we traveled precautions had to be taken. Bodyguards always were with us. Pablo, and I suppose the others, would not permit any photographs taken. In Medellín, Pablo owned more than twenty taxicabs to move around. In some of the places he stayed he had secret hiding places built into walls just in case he got trapped. When Jorge Ochoa finally got out of jail he also took elaborate steps to hide. One of the people involved in negotiations between the traffickers and the government described to the law how he was taken to meet with him.
“We drove twenty minutes around town,” he said. “We went into the garage of a house. In the garage they asked me to change vehicles. I got into a taxi. The car drove me to what I believed was an industrial area—lots of warehouses, large double-trailer trucks—and the driver asked me to get out of the car. He went over to one of the trucks that were parked on the street. He got into the driver’s seat and opened the door for me. After I was seated in the cabin, he asked me to pick up my feet and get my hands off the door. He activated some mechanism and the seat that I was sitting on moved backward, and at the same time, a door in the body of the truck opened up, and when I realized it I was already inside the body. There was a very nicely appointed office where Jorge Ochoa found himself. He said to me, ‘I would like to know whether I can count on you in order to establish discussions that would be very confidential with the government in the sense of asking the government to cease their attacks on us to let us work.’”
The thought was still that we would be able to make an agreement with the government that would permit us to resume our regular lives. No one believed this could go on for long.
When Pablo failed to get the support he wanted to fight the extradition laws he started building up his own security forces. There were many young people in Medellín who wanted to work for Pablo. It was considered a job of honor. But what was happening now was different from anything ever before. In Colombia the smuggling businesses, the drug business, the emerald business, the coffee business, the flower business, and the mining business had all for many years been an accepted part of our economy. They employed many people, including police, military, and politicians. They brought money into the country. The violence in all these businesses—as I’ve mentioned, in the emeralds it has always been much worse than with drugs—was kept almost completely inside the business. So the government watched them, but didn’t try hard to end them. Now the United States wanted Colombia to solve the Americans’ drug problem—and our government had agreed to do so. This is when the violence that shocked the world began. It was this decision, a decision that would not be of great benefit to our country, that led to the deaths of so many people.
To fight back Pablo established offices in four areas in the city, where the sicarios waited. These offices were in pool halls, barbershops, places where men would hang out together. The sicarios originally were formed to be the police of the cartel. Much of the power of the cartel came from the threat of violence as much as actual violence. People heard stories about what happened to men who cheated or betrayed the drug traffickers, and so they took great care for themselves.
Until the extradition treaties, dealing with informers or thieves was the kind of job done by the sicarios. An airport manager who betrayed the cartel by informing to the government was not an innocent person; he was making his fortune from the business and knew the consequences of his actions. But the government’s decision to change the understanding between the legal system and the traffickers by extraditing to the U.S. was considered a declaration of war on the drug traffickers. To respond Pablo and the others in Medellín formed the secret group, Los Extraditables, to fight the extraditions. At the head was Pablo, but members were all of those who were indicted in the U.S. or might be charged there with crimes. Because our government had refused to negotiate, the leaders of the cartel had nothing to lose. That’s why the motto of the organization became Pablo’s declaration: “Better a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States.” In 1986, for example, twenty-eight Colombians were extradited to the U.S. to stand trial under American law.
The first blow struck against the government came in November 1985, when Los Extraditables financed the M-19 guerrillas to stage a raid on the Palace of Justice, where the Supreme Court held its sessions. The friendship between Pablo and the M-19 went back to the peaceful resolution of the Marta Ochoa kidnapping. To solve that situation Pablo had met with Ivan Marino Ospina, the main leader of the rebels, at one of the farms he owned outside Medellín. The arrangement was made that the cartel’s force, the MAS, would not attack the guerrillas and the M-19 would leave all of the traffickers alone. During these negotiations Pablo and the leaders of the guerrillas made a firm bond. To strengthen that bond Ospina told Pablo the recent history of the sword of the liberator Simón Bolívar, a great treasure of our country. It was known to all Colombians that the sword had been captured by the founder and commander of M-19, Jaime Bateman, from a museum in 1974, who announced it would not be returned until a peace agreement was reached between the guerrillas and the government. For the M-19 the sword was a symbol of their struggle. It had been passed among rebel leaders, eventually ending in the hands of Ivan Marino. It was given to Pablo to seal the treaty between the two groups.
The sword of Simón Bolívar hung on the wall of one of Pablo’s homes until he gave it to our nephew Mario Henao
, and told him to hide it in Medellín. Meanwhile, the whole country was searching for this symbol of freedom.
The sword remained in Pablo’s possession until 1991, when the government agreed to peace with the rebels. As part of the agreement the government wanted the sword returned. So much had happened since he had received it that Pablo didn’t automatically remember it was in his possession. Worse, Pablo wasn’t sure where it was. We had thousands of hiding places in hundreds of apartments and houses all around the city. The search lasted for a long time. At that time we had voluntarily surrendered and were jailed in our own prison, the place called La Catedral. The sword of the liberator Simón Bolívar was smuggled into the prison—a deed we all believed was symbolic. We all held it, passing it around. I remember holding it in my hands and looking at it; it was both beautiful and dangerous, just like Colombia.
Pablo returned it to two M-19 leaders in Medellín and in 1991 it was given back to the government.
The evidence against the drug traffickers was kept inside the Palace of Justice. The best way to prevent extradition was to destroy all the files that they had collected. What happened in some ways was like what happened in America when the government attacked in Waco, Texas. As far as I know now it was never intended that so many people would die; the plan was just to destroy the records against the drug cartels. In fact, the traffickers offered to pay the rebels twice the millions of dollars for this if they were able to negotiate successfully with President Betancur. Some of the guerrillas got into the Justice Building the night before and waited there. They slept in the building. The next morning other guerrillas got to the building in a stolen truck and raced inside; a few security guards were killed at that time. The guerrillas took three hundred people hostage, including the members of the Supreme Court of Colombia and other judges. Almost two hundred of them were rescued within a few hours. But then the siege began.
Colombians were shocked by this attack on the government. The television covered it completely. I know Pablo watched it on television like everybody else, as I did. I don’t know if he was in contact with the rebels during this time. Because Pablo rarely showed expressions of emotion, it was difficult to know what he was thinking. I know it was difficult for me to accept that we had reached this point.
The first thought of most Colombians was that this was only a rebel attack. The M-19 did have a recording delivered to a radio station, demanding that President Betancur come to the building to negotiate. Obviously that was impossible. Hours after the siege began, the fourth floor, where the files against the traffickers were kept, was on fire.
Supposedly inside the government the generals took over, telling the president to stay out of the way. The army circled the building with tanks. On the second day they attacked the rebels. More than a hundred people died in the battle, including justices of the Supreme Court, workers in the building, and guerrillas. No one knows all the details; some of the hostages died in the attack, but others were killed by the rebels. Even today no one knows the complete facts of what happened in those hours. No question that the rebels killed innocent members of the justice ministry, but it also is known that many people who left the building alive—the shopkeepers, shoeshine people, people who were safely away from the rebels—disappeared and were never seen again. Their bodies were never found. The military and the police remain suspect in those killings.
Even inside the organization some people were shocked at this attack and decided to leave the business. If they did so respectfully there was not a problem with that. For example, in Spain the Lion felt the business was getting too dangerous and he made his own decision that it was time to leave. That was when he quit. Some others made the same decision.
The attacks on the government continued. The girl with the beautiful legs was friendly with one of the prosecutors known to be trying to make a case against Pablo by the name of Miriam Belles. One morning soon after the violence started, the prosecutor was walking out of her house to the protected cars when the sicarios went by on a motorcycle and killed her. Without evidence, the girl believed Pablo had ordered this killing. “I had an emptiness in my soul and a pain in my heart,” she remembers. “It was an action without any sense. Pablo didn’t need to kill a woman who had two children.” While still sometimes she would do a task for Pablo, she explains, the feelings she had for him were gone. The Pablo Escobar she had cared for did not exist.
Whatever threads were holding together the Medellín cartel were finally ripped apart. Each organization was left to protect itself. By that time Carlos Lehder’s organization had fallen apart completely. Like Pablo, Lehder had once dreamed of becoming president of Colombia; he even had started his own political party, the National Latin Movement. But his politics were much too hard-line; he remained an admirer of Hitler, so he never was very popular. Also, the stories of his grand life on Norman’s Cay had become public. He had ruled that place completely. All the while the cocaine planes landed and unloaded and took off again, making Lehder a billionaire.
But his most powerful weapon was money, not fear. Eventually a report on television in the United States made public the corruption of Bahamian government leaders, including their beloved prime minister, Lynden Pindling—although nothing ever was proved against him. I don’t know the truth of that specific accusation, although it was so easy to bribe officials that I wouldn’t be surprised. But the result of that report was that Norman’s Cay was closed as a transit point and Lehder could not return there. We began using other places in the Bahamas for landings, like the Berry Islands and Great Harbor, without much interruption.
Lehder spent most of his time in Colombia with Pablo. They were together at farms, and offices; they traveled through the country together. The bold Carlos that we had met a few years earlier was now gone. The government froze almost all his accounts and took over his properties and possessions. Once his fortune had been estimated at $2 billion, but now he was nearly bankrupt. While he was on the run he had to go into the jungle and there he got sick with fever. It was feared there was nothing that could be done to help him. He was dying there. Pablo sent a helicopter for him and brought him back to Medellín where he received the proper treatment to save his life. Even then he was very weak.
When he finally recovered, Pablo gave him work to do. Basically he became a trusted bodyguard, although he was given the respect he had earned. Once he was recovered he decided to start making a second fortune at a farm. One of Lehder’s new employees who was running the farm called the police, and Carlos was captured and extradited him to the United States. I was saddened, because I cared for him, because of his intelligence, and the great friendship he gave my brother Pablo. After his trial he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 135 years, so all of us now knew how we would be treated if we permitted ourselves to be extradited to the United States. With the government refusing to negotiate, our choices were only to fight until the state canceled the treaty or die fighting. As far as is known to anyone, Carlos Lehder remains hidden somewhere in the American prison system, still making appeals of his sentence.
During that time we were careful about where we stayed, and we moved often, but we didn’t feel under tremendous pressure. Pablo still returned to Napoles, although now he only remained there for brief periods of time. It was in this period that all the good deeds Pablo had done for the people began to pay off. The people who loved him refused to help the police or the military find him. In fact, many members of the police and the army remained on his payroll while they were searching for him.
We always had a great amount of security around us, whatever we did. In our family security, it was normal to have the men with the mustaches and the solid bodies, but we also had several beautiful women. In those days nobody in Colombia would think that a beautiful girl having a drink at the bar could actually be looking over the place to see if it was safe. One, I remember, was a tall blond girl with gorgeous blue eyes known as Lorena, and after working for me for t
wo years we helped her become a model in Italy. Lorena, who later helped save my life, looked like a Barbie. She was very strong, very serious. To answer the unasked question, no, there was never a sexual relationship between the security and the principal.
The reason for using the women was that they could easily go to public places without raising any suspicion. When we had a meeting in a hotel or a restaurant they could check it out without bringing any attention. If we wanted to go to a nightclub we would always send two of these women with two nicely dressed male bodyguards an hour before we wanted to show up to check the place. They acted like couples, but they were watching carefully. Later, when it became very risky for us to go out we would send as many as ten different couples, who sat at different tables and let us know if there were any problems. One night I was going to a club and sent a few couples to look the place over. They called and told me, “Everything’s cool. You can come ahead.” But just to be sure, I decided to dress like a bodyguard without using any expensive jewelry or watch, unlike one of my own bodyguards, who always wore lavish clothes and accessories. I dressed more casually. So when we got to the club, the well-dressed bodyguard with the pretty girl was invited inside—and they wouldn’t let me in! I had to go to the corner and called them inside, and everybody left.
To increase security we would also pay the club security $500 to make sure nobody with a gun got into the club. “If they show a permit,” my people told them, “tell them to walk away.” Remember, there were no cell phones then, but we had the big military phones and used them.
