The long arm of the law finally caught up with Fabio Ochoa, one of the notorious leaders of Colombia’s infamous Medellín drug cartel – but his return home has opened old wounds for victims still seeking justice. After serving over 20 years in US prisons for drug trafficking, the 67-year-old cartel boss landed in Bogotá this week a free man, with Colombian authorities confirming he faces no charges on home soil.
The news has been met with shock and outrage from those who suffered under the cartel’s reign of terror in the 1980s and 90s, when Ochoa and Pablo Escobar waged a bloody war against the Colombian state. Bombings, assassinations, and indiscriminate violence claimed the lives of thousands, including high-profile figures like presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, whose murder in 1989 still haunts the nation.
Calls for Ochoa to Face Justice
For the Galán family and countless other victims, Ochoa’s release and warm welcome in Colombia is a bitter pill to swallow. Bogotá mayor Carlos Fernando Galán, who was just 12 when his father Luis Carlos was gunned down by cartel hit men, took to Twitter to decry the “unacceptable” situation:
The majority of the [Medellín cartel’s] crimes are in impunity. Along with thousands of victims we hope to know the truth about Ochoa’s responsibility and that of his allies in kidnappings, murders and indiscriminate acts of terrorism.
Juan Manuel Galán, son of slain presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán
There is also a rising chorus of demands for Ochoa to be interrogated by Colombian prosecutors about the cartel’s many unsolved crimes. For Gonzalo Enrique Rojas, whose father died in an airline bombing masterminded by the Medellín cartel in 1989, no amount of jail time abroad can make up for this reckoning:
The years in prison [for cartel leaders] are not that relevant for those of us who are victims of the Medellín cartel. What really repairs the pain is justice and truth.
Gonzalo Enrique Rojas, son of victim in 1989 Avianca Flight 203 bombing
Will Ochoa Break His Silence?
For his part, Ochoa continues to protest his innocence regarding the cartel’s bloodshed. While admitting to his role in the drug smuggling operation that flooded the US with cocaine and made the cartel bosses obscenely wealthy, Ochoa has long denied participating in the campaign of violence unleashed across Colombia.
Speaking briefly to a media scrum at the Bogotá airport, Ochoa claimed he has already settled his debts to Colombian society:
I had paid for my drug trafficking crimes in Colombia in the early 1990s, when I spent several years in a Colombian prison.
Fabio Ochoa, former Medellín cartel leader
But with victims and their advocates clamoring for the whole truth to come out, calls for Ochoa to be brought in for questioning are only growing louder. Faced with the prospect of living out his days as a reviled symbol of an era of narco-violence that still haunts Colombia, will the former kingpin finally break his silence? For all those who lost loved ones to the Medellín cartel’s merciless pursuit of power, that reckoning is long overdue – and Ochoa may be the last best hope for delivering some measure of justice.
