Medellin cartel

June 23 The Colombian Supreme Court annuls the country s extradition treaty with the United States by a vote of 13-12. Many view tliis as a victory for the cartels, which had killed or threatened justices for several years. November 21 The indictment of Medellin cartel leader Jorge Ochoa leads to the emergence of the Extraditables, a narcoterrorist group that threatens to kill Colombian leaders if Ochoa is extradited. Ochoa is not extradited. 

December 15 Medellin cartel leader Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha is killed by Colombian police during a drug raid. 

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the First Amendment protection for religious freedom does not require states to allow use of peyote. September The three Ochoa brothers who had been major Medellin cartel leaders agree to surrender to Colombian authorities in exchange for a reduced prison sentence and no extradition to the United States. 

Five leaders of the Cali cartel are arrested. It marks the beginning of the end of the organization, which had supplanted the Medellin cartel after the arrest or killing of the latter s leaders. 

Medellin cartel Named after the Colombian city, this cartel was probably the most successful drug trafficking organization from the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s, when Pablo Escobar and other major cartel leaders were arrested, imprisoned, or killed. 

Colombia, was a quiet, conservative town before the emergence of the powerful Medellin Cartel, but more than 2,000 murders were reported during the first six months of 1989 alone. Government officials, judges, and court cmploy ces were often targets of assassination, and the impact of this terror on the fabric of the city and perhaps the entire country has been enormous (Roldan,... 

Streatfeild, 2001). Pablo Kscobar, former head of the Medellin Cartel, was eventually killed in a gunfight... 

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. 

This gunman from the Medellin cartel poses in Colombia in 2000. By maintaining tight control over the export of cocaine to countries like the United States, Columbian cartels dictated the supply and pricing, and reaped huge profits, from the cocaine business. 

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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