Lehder, Carlos

Drug kingpin Carlos Lehder establishes a refueling point in the Bahamas to allow small planes to transport cocaine between Colombia and the United States. 

In Colombia the Ochoa family, Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and Gon-... 

February 3 Medellin kingpin Carlos Lehder is captured by Colombian police and extradited to the United States. The following year he will be sentenced to life in prison without parole. 

In 1979, a Colombian named Carlos Lehder purchased 165 acres of land on the island of Norman s Cay in the Bahamas. Lehder would use this strategic location as a way to transform the smuggling of drugs into the United States. Lehder masterminded an operation that relied on using small planes and landing them at Norman s Cay for refueling on the journey... 

Carlos Lehder, shown here in a 1987 mug shot, and a group known as the Medellin cartel revolutionized the manufacture, smuggling, and distribution of cocaine in the United States. Estimates claim that the Medellin cartel was responsible for smuggling over 70 percent of the cocaine used in the United States in the early 1980s. 

For years, the island of Norman s Cay in the Bahamas was a center of drug smuggling activity for the head of the Medellin cartel, Carlos Lehder, as we have discussed earlier in this book. Located approximately 210 miles (338 kilometers) from... 

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