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Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela. Photo: AP.
Colombian drug trafficker Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, who was the leader of the powerful Cali Cartel, died after his death. in a prison in the United States, confirmed on Wednesday his defense attorney. He was 83 years old.
“It made us sad. We were very sorry to hear of your passing last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time & rdquo ;, attorney David Markus told The Associated Press, without specifying the cause of death.
The capo had survived prostate and colon cancer, however, during the pandemic he alleged He was in increasingly poor health and asked for help. He was released early for humanitarian reasons, which was denied in 2020 by a federal judge.
Captured in Colombia in 1995 and extradited to the United States in 2004, he was serving a 30-year sentence. in Butnert Prison, North Carolina.
“God has someone new to play chess with,” Markus said of Rodríguez, known as “The Chessman” because of his intelligence, the lethality of his movements in the drug world and the ingenious strategies he put together in carrying out his business, in which he did not neglect detail.
As a messenger in a pharmacy, Rodrí ;guez Orejuela passed He became one of the main drug barons in Colombia, controlling 80% of the narcotics that were exported to the United States and Europe in the 1980s and part of the 1990s.
Rodríguez Orejuela was born in Mariquita, 175 kilometers northwest of Bogotá, on January 31, 1939. He was the second of eight children and when he was very young his parents Carlos Rodríguez Prieto and Ana Rita Orejuela moved the whole family to Cali, where the rest of the children were born.
took the reins of the family from an early age, forced by the irresponsibility and aggressiveness of his father, to whom he never returned. He has been speaking since he was about 12 years old, according to his son Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón, in an autobiography published in September 2007.
Of his marriage with Mariela Mondragón, Fernando, Jaime, Humberto and Alexandra were born. Jorge Alberto came from an extramarital affair with Nelly Herrera. He had another relationship with Miriam Ramírez Librero, who had a daughter named Claudia Pilar whom he later adopted. From this union arose Andre Gilberto and José Alexander.
A few days before being extradited from Colombia to the United States, in December 2004, Rodríguez Orejuela got married. He agreed with Miriam so that the US authorities would grant her a visa to visit him.
Rodríguez Orejuela and his brother Miguel dominated the entire cocaine market in New York and Europe, and in Colombia they had They had unparalleled economic strength that allowed them to filter into the high echelons of political life.
In 1970 Rodríguez Orejuela set up He created his first apothecary, from which years later a large chain of pharmacies known as Drogas La Rebaja would be formed.
after venturing into the criminal world leading a gang known as “Los Chemas” to which he attributed & gué; the kidnapping of the foreigners Hermann Buff, secretary of the Swiss embassy, and José Stresale, son of the Swiss consul in Cali.
He was the owner of Laboratorios Kressford -a pharmaceutical company-, of the drugstore chain Drogas La Rebaja, member of the board of directors of Banco de los Trabajadores, the Boyacá Financial Corporation, majority shareholder of Grupo Radial Colombiano and the América de Cali soccer team, among other companies.
That economic power doors in the social, political and sports life of the country.
With his enormous economic power he got involved in in a war against the head of the Medellín Cartel, Pablo Escobar Gaviria, who was shot down by the police in December 1993 with the collaboration of the Cali Cartel and paramilitary groups, he specified. Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón in his book.
Rodríguez Orejuela, however, took care of himself. of Escobar’s widow for a time because she was threatened with death by the paramilitaries and figureheads of her ex-husband.
Rodríguez Orejuela won him over. arm wrestling with the United States, between 1984 and 1986, when the Washington government requested it. on extradition to Spain, where he was arrested for money laundering. But he was handed over to the Colombian justice system that prosecuted him & oacute; for crimes related to drug trafficking.
Finally, the United States Its main objective is to imprison the boss of one of the biggest drug cartels.