Photo: Eric VANDEVILLE / Contributor
Carlos Leder, once one of the most powerful drug lords in the world and co-founder of the notorious Medellín cartel, is once again in the spotlight. On Friday, Colombian law enforcement officers detained him immediately after his arrival from Germany, as it turned out that he still had an active arrest warrant in his home country, Reuters reports.
The video released by the Migration Service shows 75-year-old Leder in a suit and tie, accompanied by several agents. Grey-haired, calm, almost unrecognisable, he no longer resembles the daring smuggler who smuggled tonnes of cocaine into the US in the 1980s and was a close ally of Pablo Escobar.
In 1988, a Florida court convicted Leder of drug trafficking and sentenced him to life plus 135 years. However, his sentence was later reduced by 55 years for cooperating with US investigators and testifying against the then dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega. In 2020, due to health problems, Lederer was released from prison and deported to Germany, where he was granted asylum as a former prisoner with German paternal citizenship.
And now, five years later, he has made an unexpected return. Why he decided to come to Colombia remains a mystery. “Leder Rivas, who arrived from Frankfurt, was found in our system as a person with a valid arrest warrant,” representatives of the migration service told TV channel X. He was immediately handed over to the police.
The future fate of the former drug lord remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Leder has returned to the country that he once turned into one of the main centres of global drug trafficking. And he may have more than one reckoning with the past here.
