Word: escobar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Without doubt, he was the most pampered prisoner in all Colombia. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel who surrendered 13 months ago in exchange for a promise of no extradition to the U.S., was locked up in a suite in a luxurious prison of his own design in his hometown of Envigado. By most accounts, Escobar continued to run his billion-dollar business from behind the walls. So when Colombia's director of prisons and a deputy minister of justice entered the jail last week to tell Escobar he was being transferred to a harsher...
After a night of inconclusive negotiations, 400 army commandos stormed the jail at dawn and freed the hostages unharmed, but Escobar was gone. He and his brother Roberto and nine of their henchmen were nowhere to be found. They had somehow absconded, apparently with help from prison guards and military officers whom they had paid off. As troops combed the surrounding mountains, an embarrassed President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, who has come under criticism for dealing leniently with drug traffickers, could only remark, lamely, "I wish I had an explanation for everything that has happened...
...Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellin cartel, admitted in a note written during the kidnapping that Santos had "balls...
...have a gusty son," Escobar wrote to Santos' father. Escobar, whom Santos called "the most dangerous in the world," credited the repoter with courage facing death...
...reporter who covers crime knows that when the flash-bang goes off at the front door, the SWAT team is storming the back door," says correspondent Elaine Shannon. And so, when Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the ferocious leader of the Medellin drug cartel, surrendered to authorities in Colombia last week, Shannon knew that the real story lay elsewhere. "Escobar is a terrific sound- and-light show," she says. "But people of such towering stupidity always flame out." In her eyes, the group to watch is the Cali cartel. And, as deftly laid out by her in one of this week...