Fabio Ochoa, 78; Columbian Drug Trafficking Patriarch
Ed Varner
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) – Fabio Ochoa Restrepo, the patriarch of one of
Colombia's most important drug trafficking families, died Monday of kidney
failure. He was 78.
Fabio Ochoa, whose sons were top lieutenants in Pablo Escobar's Medellin
cartel, was never accused of drug trafficking, but he always defended his
family's reputation.
His oldest son, Jorge Luis Ochoa, told RCN television that his father, who had
been overweight and in ill health for much of his adult life, suffered a blood
infection last week. Fabio Ochoa was a renowned horse breeder.
Most of the family gathered at the La Loma ranch Monday, though Jorge Luis
Ochoa noted that his father's namesake and youngest son, Fabio Ochoa Vasquez,
could not attend because he is in jail in the United States on drug trafficking
charges.
The Medellin cartel turned drug trafficking into a multibillion dollar
industry. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Escobar unleashed a campaign of
bombings and assassinations in an attempt to intimidate the state into
abolishing extraditions.
The Ochoa family chose a more peaceful approach, and Ochoa Vasquez was the
first major trafficker to turn himself in to authorities in exchange for a
promise he wouldn't be extradited for past crimes. His surrender opened the way
for his two older brothers and other traffickers to also turn themselves in.
The deal, and a subsequent constitutional reform outlawing extradition, were
struck in hopes of ending the violence, which finally abated when police killed
Escobar in 1993.
A December 1997 constitutional change reinstated extradition, but only for
crimes committed after that date. The three brothers spent five years in
Colombian jails and vowed not to get involved in drugs again when they were
released in 1996.
However, Ochoa Vasquez was indicted in federal court in Florida on charges that
after 1997 he resumed trafficking to the United States via Mexico.
The elder Ochoa defended his son until the end, insisting that Ochoa Vasquez
was innocent the day before he was extradited to the United States last year.