“People who think that the removal of an individual will somehow make cocaine disappear don’t understand the structure of the business.”Įscobar and other traffickers formed the Medellin Cartel in the mid-1970s and turned it into a multinational industry. “The narcotics business is based on organizations,” Bob Martinez, chief of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during a visit to Colombia last month. They assert that, despite the seizures, Colombia’s cocaine output stands at an all-time high, that rival traffickers now outproduce the Medellin Cartel and that three of Escobar’s associates-the brothers Jorge Luis, Juan David and Fabio Ochoa-have continued to supervise drug operations from prison since their surrender several months ago. Medellin Cartel boss Pablo Escobar chose an area high above this valley in the cool mountains for his self-designed prison in 1991 as part of an agreement. But he did so on his own terms: he was allowed to design and build his own prison, La Catedral, which included a football pitch, giant doll house, bar, jacuzzi and waterfall. Eventually he surrendered to the Colombian authorities in 1991. and Colombian law enforcement authorities question the strategy’s effectiveness. The plane was not carrying Gaviria and all 107 aboard died. Witnesses said he was escorted to spacious cell in the ranch-home-style jail in his hometown, the Medellin suburb of Envigado, and was interrogated by the region’s top judicial official, Marta Luz Hurtado.īut U.S. Wearing jeans and a white leather jacket and sporting a beard grown in hiding, the 41-year-old fugitive handed a loaded 9-millimeter pistol to the warden and became the world’s wealthiest prisoner. Guzman described his 30 months at the MCC prison to US Federal Judge Brian Cogan as around the clock 'emotional, psychological and mental' torture.Ĭogan granted a request by Lichtman to let the former Mexican drug lord stay at the MCC for up to 60 days while his case was appealed.Pablo Escobar, the billionaire cocaine lord who eluded an intense police manhunt for seven years, surrendered to Colombian authorities Wednesday in exchange for a promise of leniency for drug-related crimes and a guarantee against extradition to the United States.Įscobar, the last major boss of the so-called Medellin Cartel still at large, was flown by government helicopter from a jungle hide-out to a specially built mountaintop jail near the city of Medellin in the company of Father Rafael Garcia Herreros, an 82-year-old Roman Catholic priest who helped negotiate his surrender. The Day Pablo Escobar Escaped From His Own Prison Published: 22 July 2021 It was on July 22nd back in 1992 when Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from his own luxurious private prison which he had built to his own specifications and staffed by his chosen guards, La Catedral. Guzman was extradited to the United States in January 2017, and was being held in solitary confinement at New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in a windowless cell that was constantly lit.Ĭompared to that, 'ADX will be like a walk in the park for him,' Guzman's attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told reporters on Wednesday. The most dangerous prisoners are allowed out of their small steel and concrete cell for only 90 minutes a day - and they must wear shackles on their hands and feet.

Guzman - who escaped Mexican prisons in 20 - will find it nearly impossible to slip out of the ADX, built in 1994 and located in a remote mountainous desert region of the western US state.Ĭurrent ADX inmates include convicted 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, the British 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid and the Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is awaiting execution.

Pablo escobar prison