Carlos Lehder Rivas

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Carlos Lehder Rivas

Carlos Lehder Rivas (born September 7, 1949 in Armenia , Colombia ) is one of the most famous Colombian drug traffickers . He is associated with the Medellín Cartel and was jointly responsible with George Jung for the cocaine wave in the United States in the late 1970s . He had been imprisoned in the United States since 1987. After serving his sentence, he was transferred to Germany in 2020.

Lehder's father is a German engineer and his mother is a Colombian teacher. He has both Colombian and German citizenship .

activity

Lehder began his criminal career as a marijuana dealer and smuggling stolen cars. While imprisoned in the American state prison in Danbury ( Connecticut ), he and his cellmate George Jung planned further criminal activities, this time with cocaine , a new export from Colombia, which was relatively unknown in the United States until then.

Thanks to his many contacts with influential people, including Pablo Escobar , the two managed to generate about 100 million US dollars in net profit from the drug in a very short time . The Bahamas - island of Norman’s Cay , which Lehder temporarily used as a seat and from which cocaine smuggling was organized with the help of sport planes and offshore boats , played an important role . In 1977 he bought a country house on the island (24 ° 37 ′ 26 ″ N 76 ° 49 ′ 1 ″ W) and later, for $ 900,000, he bought half of the island, 650 acres in size, equivalent to 263.04 hectares . Included were a marina, dock, and take-off and landing pad for small planes.

The noise of circular saws and rifle shots as well as the discovery of a sailboat loaded with a corpse near the island immediately caught the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Her task force (called Operation Caribe ) monitored Norman's Cay from a coast guard post on land. The entire island was shielded and observed by officers disguised as boaters who pretended to break down.

Imprisonment and life after

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Through its role in the global cocaine smuggling from Lehder was the United States for public enemy no. 1 explains arrested in 1987 and to a life sentence condemns plus 134 years. Through a testimony against the former ruler of Panama , Manuel Noriega , he was accepted into a witness protection program in 1995 and was able to reduce his prison sentence.

In May 2007, after a 20-year prison sentence, Lehder applied to the Colombian Supreme Court to declare his extradition to be invalid. This is equivalent to applying for release from prison in the United States by the Colombian government. The basis for this application is a regulation in the extradition treaty between Colombia and the United States. If the state to which the extradition is made does not guarantee that the sentence is limited to a maximum of 30 years, extradition is impossible.

In June 2020, Rivas was deported from the USA to Germany because he could be arrested again in Colombia. Due to a humanitarian gesture, the Federal Republic of Germany took him in and provided him with a temporary German passport, as he is not at risk of imprisonment in Germany due to his already served prison sentence. He has no relationship there. According to media reports, he is seriously ill and is looked after by a non-profit organization.

See also

Movie and TV

literature

  • Seth Ferranti: How a Nazi drug lord revolutionized cocaine smuggling. In: VICE . January 13, 2016 (interview with Ron Chepesiuk, vice.com ).
  • Meet the cocaine-addled, Hitler-obsessed drug smuggler who tried to take down Pablo Escobar In: Business Insider . March 21, 2017 (English, businessinsider.de ).
  • The German in the Medellín drug cartel In: Tages-Anzeiger . February 6, 2012 ( tagesanzeiger.ch ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ St. Petersburg Times: Carlos Lehder
  2. ↑ El narco Carlos Lehder quiere volver a Colombia , BBC Mundo, May 12, 2010
  3. ^ The German in the drug cartel in Medellín , tagesanzeiger.ch, February 6, 2012
  4. ↑ a b c d Matthias Gebauer, DER SPIEGEL: Carlos Lehder: Pablo Escobar's right hand extradited to Germany - DER SPIEGEL - Panorama. Retrieved June 16, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Lehder Rivas, Carlos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Colombian-German drug dealer
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Armenia , Colombia