The drug trafficker of the Medellín Cartel Carlos Lehder has been extradited to Germany, after serving a 33-year prison sentence in the United States, after receiving a provisional passport from the German Embassy, since he has dual nationality.
Lehder was one of the closest associates of the head of the Medellín Cartel, Pablo Escobar, and had been serving a sentence in the United States since 1987 after being extradited by Colombia.
A US court sentenced him to life in prison after being found guilty of sending two tons of cocaine to the country, but his sentence has been reduced since then. The first enabled a first reduction to 135 years after offering information that facilitated the arrest of the Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega (1934-2017).
The news has been published by the German newspaper ‘Der Spiegel’, which has revealed how Lehder, guarded at all times by two United States agents, took a plane from New York to land in Frankfurt.
The publication specifies that the extradition has occurred after a diplomatic agreement, since Lehder, in poor health, will be attended by a charity organization.
The news has been confirmed by his daughter, Mónica Lehder through a conversation with the Colombian magazine ‘Semana’. In it, the eldest daughter has assured that “it is true”, although at first she denied the news, because “she had incorrect information”.
“I do not see in her that capo, that drug dealer, I only see my dad (…) I know the big heart she has,” said her daughter after hearing the news.
Lehder is, along with Jorge Luis Ochoa, the only free-living Medellín Cartel boss, and was considered one of the most dangerous and brutal Escobar gang members.
His fortune next to Escobar was such that in mid-1978, he bought half of the Cayo Norman islet in the Bahamas near the south coast of Florida, from where he transported cocaine to the United States through old planes that he himself I sometimes piloted.
