A co-founder of the Medellin drug cartel has returned to Colombia after spending more than 20 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking.
Fabio Ochoa Vásquez, now 67, was deported by the U.S. government and arrived in Bogotá on Monday a free man.
Ochoa was a founding member of the notorious cartel and was a top lieutenant of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The Medellin cartel dominated the cocaine trade and waged a violent campaign against the Colombian state before Escobar was killed in 1993.
Upon his arrival in Bogota, immigration officials checked Ochoa's fingerprints through their database, the country's immigration agency said.
She confirmed that he was not wanted by the Colombian authorities, and said that Ochoa had been released “to be reunited with his family.”
Amid a large crowd of journalists in the airport lounge, Ochoa's relatives received and embraced his daughter.
In 2001, Ochoa was flown to the United States after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.
He had already served a prison sentence in Colombia in the early 1990s for his role as one of the leaders of the Medellin Cartel. He and his brothers were the first major traffickers to surrender under a program that protects cartel members from extradition to the United States if they plead guilty to minor crimes in Colombia.
Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again during the so-called Operation Millennium due to his involvement in the cocaine smuggling trade in the United States in the late 1990s.
In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison in a US court for his involvement in the cartel that brought an average of 30 tons of cocaine into the United States each month between 1997 and 1999.
During the 1980s, he was a major operator in Escobar's Medellin ring, and at its peak was the supplier of 80% of the US cocaine market.
The defunct Medellin Cartel, along with the Cali Cartel, was one of the most powerful and feared drug networks of the 1980s.
Its violent campaigns of bombings and assassinations led to the suspension of extraditions of drug suspects between Colombia and the United States, before resuming in 1997.
