Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 –
December 2, 1993) was a wealthy Colombian drug lord
and an elusive cocaine trafficker. [1][2] In 1983, he had
a short-lived career in Colombian politics.Pablo Escobar
was born in the town of Rionegro,[3] Antioquia ,
Colombia, the third of seven children to Abel de Jesús
Dari Escobar, a farmer, and Hemilda Gaviria, an
elementary school teacher. [4] As a teenager on the
streets of Medellín, he began his criminal career by
allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down
for resale to smugglers . His brother, Roberto Escobar,
denies this, claiming that the gravestones came from
cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for
site care and that they had a relative who had a
monuments business.[5] [dead link] He studied for a
short time at the University of Antioquia. [6]
Escobar was involved in many criminal activities with
Oscar Bernal Aguirre—running petty street scams,
selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets,
and stealing cars. In the early 1970s, he was a thief and
bodyguard, and he made a quick $100,000 on the side
kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before
entering the drug trade. [7] His next step on the ladder
was to become a millionaire by working for contraband
smuggler Alvaro Prieto. Escobar's childhood ambition
was to become a millionaire by the time he was 22. [8]
In The Accountant's Story, Pablo's brother and
accountant, Roberto Escobar, discusses the means by
which Pablo rose from middle class simplicity and
obscurity to become one of the world's wealthiest men.
At the height of its power, the Medellín drug cartel was
smuggling fifteen tonnes of cocaine a day, worth more
than half a billion dollars, into the United States.
According to Roberto, he and his brother's operation
spent $2500 a month purchasing rubber bands to wrap
the stacks of cash, storing most of it in their
warehouses; 10% had to be written-off due to
"spoilage" by rats who crept in at night and nibbled on
the hundred dollar bills. [8]
In 1975, Escobar started developing his cocaine
operation. He even flew a plane himself several times,
mainly between Colombia and Panama, to smuggle a
load into the United States . When he later bought
fifteen new and bigger airplanes (including a Learjet)
and six helicopters, he decommissioned the plane and
hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda
Napoles . His reputation grew after a well known
Medellín dealer named Fabio Restrepo was murdered in
1975 ostensibly by Escobar, from whom he had
purchased fourteen kilograms (14kg). Afterwards, all of
Restrepo's men were informed that they were working
for Pablo Escobar. In May 1976, Escobar and several of
his men were arrested and found in possession of 39
pounds (18 kg) of white paste after returning to
Medellín with a heavy load from Ecuador. Initially,
Pablo tried unsuccessfully to bribe the Medellín judges
who were forming the case against him. Instead, after
many months of legal wrangling, Pablo had the two
arresting officers bribed and the case was dropped. It
was here that he began his pattern of dealing with the
authorities by either bribing them or killing them. [9]
Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the business
simply because contraband became too dangerous to
traffic. There were no drug cartels then and only a few
drug barons, so there was plenty of business for
everyone. In Peru, they bought the cocaine paste,
which they refined in a laboratory in a two-story house
in Medellín. On his first trip, Pablo bought a paltry £30
worth of paste in what was to become the first step
towards the building of his empire. At first, he
smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires and a pilot
could earn as much as £500,000 a flight depending on
how much he could smuggle.[10]
Soon, the demand for cocaine was skyrocketing in the
United States and Pablo organized more smuggling
shipments, routes, and distribution networks in South
Florida, California and other parts of the USA. He and
Carlos Lehder worked together to develop a new island
trans-shipment point in the Bahamas , called Norman's
Cay. Carlos and Robert Vesco purchased most of the
land on the Island which included a 3,300 foot airstrip,
a harbor, hotel, houses, boats, aircraft and even built a
refrigerated warehouse to store the cocaine. From
1978–1982, this was used as a central smuggling route
for the Medellín Cartel . (According to his brother's
account, Pablo did not purchase Norman's Cay. It was,
instead, a sole venture of Carlos Lehder.) Escobar was
able to purchase the 7.7 square miles (20 km 2 ) of land,
which included Hacienda Napoles, for several million
dollars. He created a zoo , a lake and other diversions
for his family and organization.[11] At one point it was
estimated that seventy to eighty tons of cocaine were
being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. every month.
At the peak of his power in the mid-1980s, he was
shipping as much as eleven tons per flight in jetliners to
the United States (the biggest load shipped by Pablo
was 23,000 kg mixed with fish paste and shipped via
boat, this is confirmed by his brother in the book
Escobar). In addition to using the planes, Pablo's
brother, Roberto Escobar, said he also used two small
remote-controlled submarines as a way to transport the
massive loads (these subs were, in fact, manned and
this is again documented in Roberto's book). [1]
In 1982 Escobar was elected as a deputy/alternative
representative to the House of Representatives of
Colombia's Congress , as part of the Colombian Liberal
Party.[12] He was the official representative of the
Colombian government in the swearing of Felipe
González in Spain. Soon Escobar became known
internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; the
Medellín Cartel controlled a large portion of the drugs
that entered into the United States, Mexico , Puerto
Rico, the Dominican Republic and Spain with cocaine
produced with coca from Peru and Bolivia through
other drug dealers such as Roberto Suárez Gómez, since
Colombian coca was initially of substandard quality and
demand for more and better cocaine increased.
Escobar's cocaine reached many other countries in
America and Europe through Spain ; it was even
rumoured that his network reached as far as Asia.
Corruption and intimidation characterized Escobar's
dealings with the Colombian system. He had an
effective, inescapable policy in dealing with law
enforcement and the government, referred to as "plata
o plomo," (literally silver or lead, colloquially [accept]
money or [face] bullets ). This resulted in the deaths
of hundreds of individuals, including civilians,
policemen and state officials. At the same time, Escobar
bribed countless government officials, judges and other
politicians. Escobar was allegedly responsible for the
murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos
Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were
all competing in the same election, as well as the
bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building
bombing in Bogotá in 1989. The Medellin Cartel was
also involved in a deadly drug war with its primary
rival, the Cartel de Cali , for most of its existence. It is
sometimes alleged that Escobar backed the 1985
storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing
guerrillas from the 19th of April Movement, also known
as M-19, which resulted in the murder of half the
judges on the court. Some of these claims were
included in a late 2006 report by a Truth Commission
of three judges of the current Supreme Court. One of
those who discusses the attack is "Popeye", a former
Escobar hitman. At the time of the siege, the Supreme
Court was studying the constitutionality of Colombia's
extradition treaty with the U.S. [13] Roberto Escobar
stated in his book, that indeed the M-19 were paid to
break into the building of the supreme court, and burn
all papers and files on Los Extraditables—the group of
cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being
extradited to the US by their Colombian government.
But the plan backfired and hostages were taken for
negotiation of their release, so Los Extraditables were
not directly responsible for the actions of the M-19.
Pablo Escobar said that the essence of the cocaine
business was "simple—you bribe someone here, you
bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to
help you bring the money back." [14] In 1989, Forbes
magazine estimated Escobar to be one of 227
billionaires in the world with a personal net worth of
close to US$3 billion[15] while his Medellín cartel
controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. [16] It is
commonly believed that Escobar was the principal
financier behind Medellín's Atlético Nacional who won
South America's most prestigious football tournament,
the Copa Libertadores in 1989. [17]
While seen as an enemy of the United States and
Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many
in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a
natural at public relations and he worked to create
goodwill among the poor people of Colombia. A lifelong
sports fan, he was credited with building football fields
and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring children's
football teams. [8]
Escobar was responsible for the construction of many
hospitals, schools and churches in western Colombia,
which gained him popularity inside the local Roman
Catholic Church. [18] He worked hard to cultivate his
Robin Hood image, and frequently distributed money to
the poor through housing projects and other civic
activities, which gained him notable popularity among
the poor. The population of Medellín often helped
Escobar serving as lookouts, hiding information from
the authorities, or doing whatever else they could do to
protect him. [citation needed ]
Many of the wealthier residents of Medellín also viewed
him as a threat. At the height of his power, drug
traffickers from Medellín and other areas were handing
over between 20% and 35% of their Colombian
cocaine-related profits to Escobar, because he was the
one who shipped the cocaine successfully to the
US.[ citation needed ]
The Colombian cartels' continuing struggles to maintain
supremacy resulted in Colombia quickly becoming the
world’s murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in
1991 and 27,100 in 1992. [19] This increased murder
rate was fueled by Escobar's giving money to his
hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600
of whom died in this way. [20]
After the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, a
presidential candidate, the administration of César
Gaviria moved against Escobar and the drug cartels.
Eventually, the government negotiated with Escobar,
convincing him to surrender and cease all criminal
activity in exchange for a reduced sentence and
preferential treatment during his captivity.
After declaring an end to a series of previous violent
acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion,
Escobar turned himself in. He was confined in what
became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral.
Before Escobar gave himself up, the extradition of
Colombian citizens had been prohibited by the newly
approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. That was
controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar or other
drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent
Assembly.
Accounts of Escobar's continued criminal activities
began to surface in the media. When the government
found out that Escobar was continuing his criminal
activities within La Catedral, it attempted to move
Escobar to another jail on July 22, 1992. Escobar's
influence allowed him to discover the plan in advance
and make a well-timed, unhurried escape.[22] He was
still worried that he could be extradited to the United
States.
In 1992, the United States Joint Special Operations
Command and Centra Spike joined the manhunt for
Escobar. They trained and advised a special Colombian
police task force, known as the Search Bloc, which had
been created to locate Escobar. Later, as the conflict
between Escobar and the United States and Colombian
governments dragged on and the numbers of his
enemies grew, a vigilante group known as Los Pepes
(Los Perseguidos por P ablo Escobar, "People
Persecuted by Pablo Escobar") was financed by his
rivals and former associates, including the Cali Cartel
and right-wing paramilitaries led by Carlos Castaño ,
who would later found the Peasant Self-Defense Forces
of Córdoba and Urabá . Los Pepes carried out a bloody
campaign fueled by vengeance in which more than 300
of Escobar's associates and relatives were slain and
large amounts of his cartel's property were destroyed.
Members of the Search Bloc, and also of Colombian
and the United States intelligence agencies, in their
efforts to find and punish Escobar, either colluded with
Los Pepes or moonlighted as both Search Bloc and Los
Pepes simultaneously. This coordination was allegedly
conducted mainly through the sharing of intelligence in
order to allow Los Pepes to bring down Escobar and
his few remaining allies, but there are reports that
some individual Search Bloc members directly
participated in missions of the Los Pepes death squads.
[18] One of the leaders of Los Pepes was Diego Murillo
Bejarano (also known as "Don Berna"), a former
Medellín Cartel associate who became a drug kingpin
and eventually emerged as a leader of one of the most
powerful factions within the AUC.
The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993,
amid another attempt to elude the Search Bloc. Using
radio triangulation technology provided by the French,
a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by
Brigadier Hugo Martinez, [23] found him hiding in a
middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing
in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro
de Jesús Agudelo AKA "El Limón," ensued. The two
fugitives attempted to escape by running across the
roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but
both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police.
[24] Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg, torso, and
the fatal one in his ear. It has never been proven who
actually fired the final shot into his head, or determined
whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as
part of possible execution, and there is wide
speculation about the subject. Some of the family
members believe that Escobar could have committed
suicide.[25][26] His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and
Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself
through the ears: "He committed suicide, he did not get
killed. During all the years they went after him, he
would say to me every day that if he was really
cornered without a way out, he would shoot himself
through the ears." [27]
After Escobar's death and the fragmentation of the
Medellín Cartel the cocaine market soon became
dominated by the rival Cali Cartel , until the mid-1990s
when its leaders, too, were either killed or captured by
the Colombian government.
The Robin Hood image that he had cultivated
continued to have lasting influence in Medellín. Many
there, especially many of the city's poor that had been
aided by him while he was alive, mourned his death.
About 25,000 were present for his burial.
Criminal career
December 2, 1993) was a wealthy Colombian drug lord
and an elusive cocaine trafficker. [1][2] In 1983, he had
a short-lived career in Colombian politics.Pablo Escobar
was born in the town of Rionegro,[3] Antioquia ,
Colombia, the third of seven children to Abel de Jesús
Dari Escobar, a farmer, and Hemilda Gaviria, an
elementary school teacher. [4] As a teenager on the
streets of Medellín, he began his criminal career by
allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down
for resale to smugglers . His brother, Roberto Escobar,
denies this, claiming that the gravestones came from
cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for
site care and that they had a relative who had a
monuments business.[5] [dead link] He studied for a
short time at the University of Antioquia. [6]
Escobar was involved in many criminal activities with
Oscar Bernal Aguirre—running petty street scams,
selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets,
and stealing cars. In the early 1970s, he was a thief and
bodyguard, and he made a quick $100,000 on the side
kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before
entering the drug trade. [7] His next step on the ladder
was to become a millionaire by working for contraband
smuggler Alvaro Prieto. Escobar's childhood ambition
was to become a millionaire by the time he was 22. [8]
In The Accountant's Story, Pablo's brother and
accountant, Roberto Escobar, discusses the means by
which Pablo rose from middle class simplicity and
obscurity to become one of the world's wealthiest men.
At the height of its power, the Medellín drug cartel was
smuggling fifteen tonnes of cocaine a day, worth more
than half a billion dollars, into the United States.
According to Roberto, he and his brother's operation
spent $2500 a month purchasing rubber bands to wrap
the stacks of cash, storing most of it in their
warehouses; 10% had to be written-off due to
"spoilage" by rats who crept in at night and nibbled on
the hundred dollar bills. [8]
In 1975, Escobar started developing his cocaine
operation. He even flew a plane himself several times,
mainly between Colombia and Panama, to smuggle a
load into the United States . When he later bought
fifteen new and bigger airplanes (including a Learjet)
and six helicopters, he decommissioned the plane and
hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda
Napoles . His reputation grew after a well known
Medellín dealer named Fabio Restrepo was murdered in
1975 ostensibly by Escobar, from whom he had
purchased fourteen kilograms (14kg). Afterwards, all of
Restrepo's men were informed that they were working
for Pablo Escobar. In May 1976, Escobar and several of
his men were arrested and found in possession of 39
pounds (18 kg) of white paste after returning to
Medellín with a heavy load from Ecuador. Initially,
Pablo tried unsuccessfully to bribe the Medellín judges
who were forming the case against him. Instead, after
many months of legal wrangling, Pablo had the two
arresting officers bribed and the case was dropped. It
was here that he began his pattern of dealing with the
authorities by either bribing them or killing them. [9]
Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the business
simply because contraband became too dangerous to
traffic. There were no drug cartels then and only a few
drug barons, so there was plenty of business for
everyone. In Peru, they bought the cocaine paste,
which they refined in a laboratory in a two-story house
in Medellín. On his first trip, Pablo bought a paltry £30
worth of paste in what was to become the first step
towards the building of his empire. At first, he
smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires and a pilot
could earn as much as £500,000 a flight depending on
how much he could smuggle.[10]
Soon, the demand for cocaine was skyrocketing in the
United States and Pablo organized more smuggling
shipments, routes, and distribution networks in South
Florida, California and other parts of the USA. He and
Carlos Lehder worked together to develop a new island
trans-shipment point in the Bahamas , called Norman's
Cay. Carlos and Robert Vesco purchased most of the
land on the Island which included a 3,300 foot airstrip,
a harbor, hotel, houses, boats, aircraft and even built a
refrigerated warehouse to store the cocaine. From
1978–1982, this was used as a central smuggling route
for the Medellín Cartel . (According to his brother's
account, Pablo did not purchase Norman's Cay. It was,
instead, a sole venture of Carlos Lehder.) Escobar was
able to purchase the 7.7 square miles (20 km 2 ) of land,
which included Hacienda Napoles, for several million
dollars. He created a zoo , a lake and other diversions
for his family and organization.[11] At one point it was
estimated that seventy to eighty tons of cocaine were
being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. every month.
At the peak of his power in the mid-1980s, he was
shipping as much as eleven tons per flight in jetliners to
the United States (the biggest load shipped by Pablo
was 23,000 kg mixed with fish paste and shipped via
boat, this is confirmed by his brother in the book
Escobar). In addition to using the planes, Pablo's
brother, Roberto Escobar, said he also used two small
remote-controlled submarines as a way to transport the
massive loads (these subs were, in fact, manned and
this is again documented in Roberto's book). [1]
In 1982 Escobar was elected as a deputy/alternative
representative to the House of Representatives of
Colombia's Congress , as part of the Colombian Liberal
Party.[12] He was the official representative of the
Colombian government in the swearing of Felipe
González in Spain. Soon Escobar became known
internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; the
Medellín Cartel controlled a large portion of the drugs
that entered into the United States, Mexico , Puerto
Rico, the Dominican Republic and Spain with cocaine
produced with coca from Peru and Bolivia through
other drug dealers such as Roberto Suárez Gómez, since
Colombian coca was initially of substandard quality and
demand for more and better cocaine increased.
Escobar's cocaine reached many other countries in
America and Europe through Spain ; it was even
rumoured that his network reached as far as Asia.
Corruption and intimidation characterized Escobar's
dealings with the Colombian system. He had an
effective, inescapable policy in dealing with law
enforcement and the government, referred to as "plata
o plomo," (literally silver or lead, colloquially [accept]
money or [face] bullets ). This resulted in the deaths
of hundreds of individuals, including civilians,
policemen and state officials. At the same time, Escobar
bribed countless government officials, judges and other
politicians. Escobar was allegedly responsible for the
murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos
Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were
all competing in the same election, as well as the
bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building
bombing in Bogotá in 1989. The Medellin Cartel was
also involved in a deadly drug war with its primary
rival, the Cartel de Cali , for most of its existence. It is
sometimes alleged that Escobar backed the 1985
storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing
guerrillas from the 19th of April Movement, also known
as M-19, which resulted in the murder of half the
judges on the court. Some of these claims were
included in a late 2006 report by a Truth Commission
of three judges of the current Supreme Court. One of
those who discusses the attack is "Popeye", a former
Escobar hitman. At the time of the siege, the Supreme
Court was studying the constitutionality of Colombia's
extradition treaty with the U.S. [13] Roberto Escobar
stated in his book, that indeed the M-19 were paid to
break into the building of the supreme court, and burn
all papers and files on Los Extraditables—the group of
cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being
extradited to the US by their Colombian government.
But the plan backfired and hostages were taken for
negotiation of their release, so Los Extraditables were
not directly responsible for the actions of the M-19.
Pablo Escobar said that the essence of the cocaine
business was "simple—you bribe someone here, you
bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to
help you bring the money back." [14] In 1989, Forbes
magazine estimated Escobar to be one of 227
billionaires in the world with a personal net worth of
close to US$3 billion[15] while his Medellín cartel
controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. [16] It is
commonly believed that Escobar was the principal
financier behind Medellín's Atlético Nacional who won
South America's most prestigious football tournament,
the Copa Libertadores in 1989. [17]
While seen as an enemy of the United States and
Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many
in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a
natural at public relations and he worked to create
goodwill among the poor people of Colombia. A lifelong
sports fan, he was credited with building football fields
and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring children's
football teams. [8]
Escobar was responsible for the construction of many
hospitals, schools and churches in western Colombia,
which gained him popularity inside the local Roman
Catholic Church. [18] He worked hard to cultivate his
Robin Hood image, and frequently distributed money to
the poor through housing projects and other civic
activities, which gained him notable popularity among
the poor. The population of Medellín often helped
Escobar serving as lookouts, hiding information from
the authorities, or doing whatever else they could do to
protect him. [citation needed ]
Many of the wealthier residents of Medellín also viewed
him as a threat. At the height of his power, drug
traffickers from Medellín and other areas were handing
over between 20% and 35% of their Colombian
cocaine-related profits to Escobar, because he was the
one who shipped the cocaine successfully to the
US.[ citation needed ]
The Colombian cartels' continuing struggles to maintain
supremacy resulted in Colombia quickly becoming the
world’s murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in
1991 and 27,100 in 1992. [19] This increased murder
rate was fueled by Escobar's giving money to his
hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600
of whom died in this way. [20]
After the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, a
presidential candidate, the administration of César
Gaviria moved against Escobar and the drug cartels.
Eventually, the government negotiated with Escobar,
convincing him to surrender and cease all criminal
activity in exchange for a reduced sentence and
preferential treatment during his captivity.
After declaring an end to a series of previous violent
acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion,
Escobar turned himself in. He was confined in what
became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral.
Before Escobar gave himself up, the extradition of
Colombian citizens had been prohibited by the newly
approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. That was
controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar or other
drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent
Assembly.
Accounts of Escobar's continued criminal activities
began to surface in the media. When the government
found out that Escobar was continuing his criminal
activities within La Catedral, it attempted to move
Escobar to another jail on July 22, 1992. Escobar's
influence allowed him to discover the plan in advance
and make a well-timed, unhurried escape.[22] He was
still worried that he could be extradited to the United
States.
In 1992, the United States Joint Special Operations
Command and Centra Spike joined the manhunt for
Escobar. They trained and advised a special Colombian
police task force, known as the Search Bloc, which had
been created to locate Escobar. Later, as the conflict
between Escobar and the United States and Colombian
governments dragged on and the numbers of his
enemies grew, a vigilante group known as Los Pepes
(Los Perseguidos por P ablo Escobar, "People
Persecuted by Pablo Escobar") was financed by his
rivals and former associates, including the Cali Cartel
and right-wing paramilitaries led by Carlos Castaño ,
who would later found the Peasant Self-Defense Forces
of Córdoba and Urabá . Los Pepes carried out a bloody
campaign fueled by vengeance in which more than 300
of Escobar's associates and relatives were slain and
large amounts of his cartel's property were destroyed.
Members of the Search Bloc, and also of Colombian
and the United States intelligence agencies, in their
efforts to find and punish Escobar, either colluded with
Los Pepes or moonlighted as both Search Bloc and Los
Pepes simultaneously. This coordination was allegedly
conducted mainly through the sharing of intelligence in
order to allow Los Pepes to bring down Escobar and
his few remaining allies, but there are reports that
some individual Search Bloc members directly
participated in missions of the Los Pepes death squads.
[18] One of the leaders of Los Pepes was Diego Murillo
Bejarano (also known as "Don Berna"), a former
Medellín Cartel associate who became a drug kingpin
and eventually emerged as a leader of one of the most
powerful factions within the AUC.
The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993,
amid another attempt to elude the Search Bloc. Using
radio triangulation technology provided by the French,
a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by
Brigadier Hugo Martinez, [23] found him hiding in a
middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing
in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro
de Jesús Agudelo AKA "El Limón," ensued. The two
fugitives attempted to escape by running across the
roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but
both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police.
[24] Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg, torso, and
the fatal one in his ear. It has never been proven who
actually fired the final shot into his head, or determined
whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as
part of possible execution, and there is wide
speculation about the subject. Some of the family
members believe that Escobar could have committed
suicide.[25][26] His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and
Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself
through the ears: "He committed suicide, he did not get
killed. During all the years they went after him, he
would say to me every day that if he was really
cornered without a way out, he would shoot himself
through the ears." [27]
After Escobar's death and the fragmentation of the
Medellín Cartel the cocaine market soon became
dominated by the rival Cali Cartel , until the mid-1990s
when its leaders, too, were either killed or captured by
the Colombian government.
The Robin Hood image that he had cultivated
continued to have lasting influence in Medellín. Many
there, especially many of the city's poor that had been
aided by him while he was alive, mourned his death.
About 25,000 were present for his burial.
Criminal career
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