 A "WANTED" poster of Escobar Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (January 12, 1949–December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord who was considered by members of the government, news reporters and the general public alike to be one of the most ruthless, ambitious and powerful drug dealers in history. He made billions of dollars and became one of the richest men in the world smuggling cocaine into the United States.
Life
Escobar began his career as a car thief in the streets of Medellín, Colombia as a teenager. He started building his drug empire during the 1970s.
During the 1980s, Escobar became known internationally because his drug network, El Cartel de Medellín, is said to have controlled a large portion of the drugs that entered into Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, with cocaine base brought from Peru and Bolivia. Escobar's product reached many other nations, mostly around the Americas, although it is said that his network reached as far as Asia.
Escobar was also suspected of bribing government officials, judges and other politicians. He often personally executed uncooperative subordinates. He was the prime suspect in the killing of three presidential candidates in Colombia, including one aboard an Avianca jet in 1989. He was also suspected of many terrorist bombings including the attacks on Avianca Flight 203 and a Bogota security building in 1989. Medellín was involved in a deadly drug war with Colombia's other main drug cartel, Cartel De Cali. Escobar may have ordered more than 100 murders. He was also suspected of the kidnappings, rapes, and murders of numerous women at his notorious house parties.
Escobar, according to a television documentary shown in the United States, built an air strip in The Bahamas, from which he could direct delivery into the States.
While an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín. A lifelong sports fan, he was credited with building Little League baseball stadiums and sponsoring little league baseball teams in the city. He also bought gifts and distributed money to the poor. Much of the population worked as volunteer lookouts for Escobar and helped hide information from the authorities. The poor of the region also provided the recruits to staff his operations.
Escobar was jailed in La Catedral, his "private prison", which he himself had built under the agreement that, after remaining jailed there for a mandatory 5 year sentence, he would be set free with a Degree in Law. But he escaped on July 22 1992, fearing extradition to the United States. It has been rumored that, while hiding, he was working out a deal with the DEA in which he would surrender, but the DEA would have to arrest members of his rival organization too.
In 1992 a special police task force known as the Search Block was created in Colombia to locate and capture or kill Pablo Escobar. Roughly at the same time, a group known as Los Pepes (People Prosecuted by Pablo Escobar), made up of enemies and former allies of Escobar who had broken with him, started a bloody retribution in which more than 300 of Pablo's associates or their relatives were slain. (Some observers claim that some agents of US and Colombian intelligence and law enforcement organizations, in their zeal to find and punish Escobar, colluded with members of Los Pepes, mainly by sharing information and sources.)
Escobar was killed on December 2, 1993, while trying to run away from the Search Bloc, which had found him living in a middle class barrio in Medellin. Some claim snipers of the U.S. Special Operations Command may have taken part in the final hunt for Escobar. Prior to his death, his family had flown to Germany seeking asylum, but they were rejected by the German government. Whether Escobar died during an actual shootout or not has always been debated, but his corpse was found on the roof of a house.
The hunt for Escobar was documented in Mark Bowden's book, Killing Pablo, which will be made into a motion picture.
In 1998, Amnesty International sued the CIA for information which would potentially link the agency to the Los Pepes death squad [1] (http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/colombia/document.do?id=C8933BDCD8429E7F85256CE100614120). The hearing on July 18, 2001, states: "Under the
terms of the FOIA law, every U.S. agency has an obligation to
respond within 10 days. It took the CIA 3 years, numerous press reports, a hugely successful book on the subject—Killing Pablo—and a
lawsuit to say they could neither "confirm nor deny the
existence or nonexistence of records." [2] (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_hr/071801_oversight.html)
Other Information
Further reading
- Killing Pablo, by Mark Bowden, Penguin Books, paperback, 1992. ISBN: 0142000957
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