Fabio Ochoa celebrates arrival in Bogotá, surrounded by journalists. Source: AP News
Victims of the Medellín cartel protest Fabio Ochoa’s impunity in his home country
By Isa Oliveira Taranto, Staff Writer
On the 23rd of December, 2024, former Colombian trafficker Fabio Ochoa was set free after serving 25 years in an American prison. Convicted for drug-smuggling charges in 2001, Ochoa was a key figure of the Medellín Cartel, an organization that terrorized Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s under the leadership of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Ochoa was an essential part of the cartel’s cocaine distribution to the United States. Deported back to his home country, he is initially not set to face any other charges.
Drug trafficking in Colombia is relatively recent, at least in the scales for which it became known. In the 1970s, marijuana traffickers – precursors to the Medellín Cartel, including Pablo Escobar – began smuggling small amounts of cocaine in planes to the United States. Growing demand in the U.S. led to rapid wealth accumulation and expansion of operations, until the Medellín cartel and some of its fiercest competitors had become institutions with great power to interfere in the country’s politics. Today, long after the end of the cartels’ era of largest influence, Colombia is still one of the top coca bush producing countries in the world, according to the United Nations.
As the Medellín cartel expanded into a complicated organization, some men rose to prominence as administrators of its operations, Fabio Ochoa and his two brothers included. Fabio is the youngest son of a well-off family who became involved with Escobar while still young. He has amassed impressive wealth – which authorities were never able to fully seize – and has had a turbulent relationship with law enforcement for decades.
Ochoa first faced charges in the United States in 1968 for his alleged involvement in the death of Barry Seal, an American who worked for the Medellín cartel but eventually became an U.S. government informant. He turned himself in to Colombian police in 1990 to avoid extradition to the US and was released six years later. He was arrested again in 1999, extradited to the United States in 2001, and convicted to 30 years in the United States of which he served 25.
Now 67, Ochoa is returning home without facing any other legal charges by the Colombian government. As a leader of the Medellín cartel, it is difficult to link him to specific incidents; it is more likely that he was behind structural decisions and not directly involved with the crime scenes he commissioned. Ochoa has denied involvement in the killings for which the cartel became notorious. Nonetheless, his share of responsibility for the terror invoked for years by the operation is undeniable: the Medellín cartel is estimated to have orchestrated more than 4,000 deaths, with many of those targeted belonging to the police force or other governmental institutions.
Ochoa’s return to freedom has sparked outrage from families of cartel victims and has been opposed by important figures of civil society. The mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, has spoken against Ochoa’s impunity in Colombia. In 1989, his father, Luis Carlos Galán, was assassinated by a cartel hitman while running for presidency, after publicly denouncing Escobar and supporting the extradition of drug lords to face charges in the United States. His death became symbolic of the fight against the violence incited by the cartels in Colombia. Beyond Carlos Fernando, other victims have also expressed the hope that Ochoa is at least taken in for questioning; his central position in the cartel could be an important asset to the government, if he is willing to cooperate.
Gonzalo Enrique Rojas, the son of another cartel victim, said that the years Ochoa spent in prison are not what matters to those impacted by the Medellín cartel’s activities.
“What really repairs the pain,” Rojas concluded, “is justice and truth.”
Colombia still struggles to grapple with its turbulent recent past. Escobar’s figure is both revered and despised: some consider him a Robin Hood-esque figure, while others still have to cope with the grief and destruction the Medellín cartel left behind. Since the cartel’s dismantling, diverse initiatives to contain drug trafficking have had varying degrees of success. Nonetheless, drug trafficking in Colombia equaled almost 2% of its 2019 GDP. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has faced an additional increase in cocaine production.
It is in this context that Fabio Ochoa returns, free of charges but complicit in the history that created one of Colombia’s most significant enduring struggles.
