Word: colombian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...powerful crime cabal that is said to supply 80% of the world's cocaine. The group rakes in billions of dollars annually, allegedly smuggling up to 15 tons of cocaine monthly into the U.S. and Europe. Aware that underlings might try to rescue their billionaire boss, U.S. and Colombian officials hastily drew up papers to extradite Lehder to the U.S. Before the sun had set, he was en route to Florida, where he will stand trial on a 1981 indictment on charges of smuggling drugs and running a criminal enterprise, which could put him behind bars for life...
...recent months the President has come on strong. When the Colombian Supreme Court used a technicality to void a controversial extradition treaty with the U.S. that was aimed at drug traffickers, Barco quickly reactivated the agreement. A few days later, a prominent newspaperman who had been openly critical of drug traffickers was slain in Bogota. Barco ordered a sweeping offensive against la mafia, as the drug barons are known. Police stepped up raids, arrests and drug seizures. Since then, Barco has signed several decrees making it easier for authorities to move against drug traffickers...
...grand jury charged that since 1978, Escobar and his confederates have smuggled into the U.S. at least 58 tons of cocaine from facilities like Tranquilandia, a massive complex of coke-processing laboratories in the Amazon jungle that Colombian authorities busted in 1984. The Medellin drug barons were also indicted for plotting the murder of Adler ("Barry") Seal, a drug ( smuggler turned informant who was gunned down last February in Baton Rouge, La. Seal was to have been the Government's star witness in the trial of the cocaine kingpins...
...others named with Escobar were the three Ochoa Vasquez brothers, Jorge Luis, Juan David and Fabio, who manage the ring's distribution networks, as well as Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, a former Colombian legislator who is suspected of financing terrorist attacks on his own government. The indictment names four lower-level associates, including Federico Vaughan, a former aide to Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez, who is accused of helping the cartel set up cocaine labs in Nicaragua. Using incriminating photos of Vaughan supplied by Seal, the Reagan Administration has accused Nicaragua's Sandinista government of involvement in drug trafficking...
...drug barons are not likely to come to trial any time soon, if ever. The indictments were handed down secretly three months ago in the hopes that U.S. and Colombian authorities would be able to capture the fugitives unawares. No such luck. "We've been unable to arrest any of them," said a federal narcotics prosecutor in Miami...