Carlos Lehder, Pablo Escobar’s Feared Former Associate and Manuel Antonio Noriega’s Informer, Returns to Colombia
This photograph, released by Colombia’s General Directorate of Migration, shows Colombian immigration agents escorting former Medellin Cartel boss Carlos Lehder Rivas (center), upon his arrival at Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport after being deported from Frankfurt on March 28, 2025.
Bogotá, Colombia: A former associate of Pablo Escobar, pictured below, in the Medellín cartel traveled from Germany to Colombia on Friday, where he was taken into police custody to verify his legal status. Carlos Lehder, 75, was the first major Colombian drug lord extradited to the United States, where he served a 30-year prison sentence. He was deported to Germany after his release in 2020 due to his dual nationality, despite having repeatedly expressed his desire to return to Colombia. The immigration authority published photographs and videos of Lehder at Bogotá’s El Dorado Airport wearing a suit and tie. It stated that it placed him “at the disposal” of the police due to an “active arrest warrant” in the country.
The agency then transferred the former drug lord to an investigative unit “to verify his legal status,” it reported on the social media platform X. Nicknamed El Loco for his eccentricities, Lehder was a protagonist in one of the bloodiest periods in the history of the South American country under the leadership of Escobar. An iconic figure of evil, Escobar waged a relentless war against the Colombian state to prevent his extradition to the United States. This period was marked by the indiscriminate detonation of car bombs and the kidnapping or murder of political leaders, journalists, and judges.
Pablo Escobar was killed by Colombian police on December 2, 1993, in Medellín. Only Lehder and another of his cartel associates, Fabio Ochoa Vásquez, were extradited to the United States. In 1992, in an agreement to testify against Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, pictured above, his sentence was reduced to 55 years. Ochoa Vásquez was deported to Colombia in December after serving more than two decades in a U.S. prison. With no outstanding issues with the Colombian justice system, he is free. Nicknamed “El Loco” (The Madman) for his eccentricities, Carlos Lehder was a protagonist in one of the bloodiest periods in the history of the South American country, alongside Pablo Escobar.
