Pablo Escobar negotiated a prison he designed himself, then walked out of it
In 1991 Colombia's most wanted man surrendered on his own terms: no extradition to the United States, and confinement in La Catedral, a jail he had built, complete with a football pitch, bar and waterfall. When officials tried to move him to a real prison in 1992, Pablo Escobar simply escaped.
Escobar was born on 1 December 1949 in Rionegro, the third of seven children of a small farmer and a schoolteacher, and grew up poor in nearby Medellín. He left school, drifted into petty crime, from reselling stolen tombstones to car theft, and then into kidnapping for ransom. In 1976 he founded the Medellín Cartel, which opened smuggling routes from Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador through Colombia into the United States. By the 1980s it was estimated to be shipping 70 to 80 tons of cocaine north each month.
His method with officials became known as silver or lead: accept a bribe or be killed. After his 1976 arrest with 39 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a spare tyre, he replaced one judge and bribed the next. Money from a Bahamas transit route bought Hacienda Nápoles, an estate with a private zoo. He also paid for housing, football pitches and hospitals in Medellín's poorest districts, earning the nickname Paisa Robin Hood, and in 1982 won a seat as an alternate congressman, which carried parliamentary immunity.
Politics turned against him. Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara-Bonilla publicly accused him, the Liberal leader Luis Carlos Galán expelled him from the party, and Escobar quit politics in 1984. Both men were later assassinated, Galán in 1989 on his orders. A bomb he planted on Avianca Flight 203, aimed at the future president César Gaviria, who was not aboard, killed all 107 people on the plane, and because two Americans died the US began intervening directly.
Colombia's new 1991 constitution banned extradition of citizens, a change many suspected drug lords had influenced, and Escobar then surrendered. After his escape from La Catedral a nationwide manhunt followed, his cartel crumbled, and police killed him in Medellín on 2 December 1993, a day after he turned 44. His fortune was estimated at 30 billion dollars. More than 25,000 people attended his funeral, and his estate is now a theme park.
Source: Pablo Escobar
