Colombia: Escobar’s former head assassin leaves prison

A man who confessed to hundreds of murders as head of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's army of assassins, including the death of a former presidential hopeful that epitomized the wave of extreme cartel violence in Colombia in the early 1990s, was released on Tuesday from a maximum-security prison under heavy police guard.

John Jairo Velásquez, better known by his nickname, Popeye, was paroled despite protests from relatives of his many alleged victims. Velasquez has boasted in interviews that he killed some 300 people, and helped plan the murders of 3,000 others, as head assassin for the former Medellín cartel, which at its height of power trafficked 15 tons of cocaine a day.

Velásquez spent 22 years behind bars for plotting the murder of a cartel-fighting politician, Luis Carlos Galán, during his campaign for the 1990 presidential election. Galán had been favored to win Colombia's highest office during the apex of drug violence that engulfed Colombia two decades ago.

In a string of interviews anticipating his early release, Velásquez figured that he had about an 80 percent chance of being killed by former rivals after being released. With the threat of a revenge killing lurking, he said he was considering relocating abroad, although Colombian media expected him to return to his native Medellín after a brief period in Bogotá, the capital.

Velásquez said he also wants to sell to Hollywood the rights to an autobiography he wrote about his life alongside Escobar, who was killed on Dec. 2. 1993, by Search Bloc, a United States–sponsored Colombian police task force that acted to enforce the controversial U.S. war on drugs.

Escobar’s greatest fear, even at the height of power, was possible extradition to the United States. In a bid to avoid the U.S. justice system, Escobar ordered scores of assassinations — of judges, Cabinet ministers and journalists. He even downed a commercial jetliner because he believed Galán’s political heir, then-President Cesar Gaviria, was aboard.

“We killed Galán because we saw that he was going to reach the presidency and was going to extradite us to the United States,” Velásquez told the Colombian weekly magazine Semana last year.

Velasquez was one of Escobar's most-trusted lieutenants during the campaign of terror, joining the capo's Medellin cocaine cartel before he turned 18. But the only murder for which Velasquez was convicted was Galan's.

Family members of Velásquez’s many other alleged victims, as well as legal experts, grasped for an explanation when a judge last week determined he was eligible for parole.

“It’s really sad that an assassin who committed so many homicides was sentenced for a single murder,” said Gen. Carlos Mena, the head of Colombia’s highway police who, as a young officer, helped U.S. authorities hunt down Escobar, who was killed by police in 1993.

Velasquez, 52, took advantage of his time behind bars to obtain a number of academic degrees and to seek forgiveness from his victims. He also provided prosecutors with testimony that led to the conviction of a former justice minister close to Escobar, Alberto Santofimio, for involvement in Galan's murder.

But even while expressing regret about his crimes, he continued to demonstrate admiration for his former boss.

“If Pablo Escobar were to be reborn, I'd go with him without thinking,” he told El Tiempo newspaper last year.

With news wires