Infamous drug lord Carlos Lehder was freed Monday after being arrested in Colombia on charges of arms and narcotics trafficking last Friday, March 28.
The Colombian Attorney General’s office had guaranteed in a letter that the co-founder of the Medellín Cartel would not face charges upon returning to the country after 38 years, but customs officers detained him under a judge’s order.
Monday morning, a Bogotá court ruled that the charges had expired and the arrest was unlawful, granting Lehder his freedom once again.
The Colombian-German national, 75, is one of Colombia’s most notorious drug kingpins, founding the Medellín Cartel in the 1970s alongside Pablo Escobar.
He was released from prison and deported to Germany in 2020 after serving 33 years in a U.S. cell.
After arriving in Colombia on a flight from Frankfurt, where he had lived freely for almost five years, migration officers detained him due to an outstanding warrant for historic crimes.
“Migration Colombia handed Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, former leader of the Medellin Cartel, into police custody. Lehder Rivas, who arrived in the country from Frankfurt, had an active arrest warrant in our database,” wrote Migration Colombia on X.
Lehder had reportedly been travelling to Colombia as a tourist to visit family.
If found guilty of the charges, the 75-year-old would have faced a 24-year sentence.
His lawyer, Sondra McCollins, denounced the arrest, citing the letter from the Attorney General’s office and Lehder’s prison time in the U.S..
“We hope that… the sentencing judge can rule that the sentence has already been served and that they are not going to ignore his rights as they did in 1987,” she told newspaper El Tiempo.
Lehder was the first Colombian drug lord to be extradited to the United States.
Many Colombians view extradition as a miscarriage of justice, according to Sergio Guzmán, Director at Colombia Risk Analysis, a security think tank.
“People who got tried in U.S. courts… they sort of have never answered to Colombian judges and Colombian courts for their crimes,” the analyst told Latin America Reports.
One victim, the son of Álvaro Medina Ochoa, a Medellín high-court judge who was killed in 1985 by the Medellín cartel, welcomed Lehder’s initial arrest.
“In Colombia he has not paid a single day, he has not collaborated with truth-finding nor has he repaid victims,” Ricardo Medina told W Radio.
Lehder was sentenced by a U.S. judge to 135 years in prison in 1987 but his sentence was shortened after he testified against Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
The drug lord was eventually released early in 2020 and moved to Germany.
Featured image description: Carlos Lehder being escorted by Migration officers.
Featured image credit: @MigracionCol via X.
