One of Colombia's biggest drug traffickers, in an interview broadcast Monday, claimed credit for the 1993 killing of rival drug lord Pablo Escobar, saying he supplied police with a tracking device that allowed them to hunt down the infamous trafficker.
In a lengthy radio interview, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela said he was personally threatened by Escobar and described in detail for the first time the extent to which he helped the Colombian government hunt down their common enemy.
TRACKING DEVICE
Escobar was killed on Dec. 2, 1993, after police found him by using a device that pinpointed the location of a telephone he was using. Authorities have acknowledged using information from Rodriguez Orejuela's Cali cartel in their hunt for Escobar, who was waging a bloody terrorist campaign to combat extradition to the US.
The comments by Rodriguez Orejuela, who was extradited to the US over the weekend, marked the first time anyone has said the Cali cartel provided the equipment that led to Escobar's death. The interview was taped days before Rodriguez Orejuela was flown to Miami but not broadcast until Monday.
"There is a device that's called Direction Finder, which at that time was unknown in Colombia," Rodriguez Orejuela said. "The police didn't have it. We obtained it ... We gave it to them and gave them information about Pablo Escobar."
Retired General Hugo Martinez, who headed the elite police unit that killed Escobar after hunting him for months, said he was unaware of any equipment donated by Rodriguez Orejuela.
"It really surprised me to learn that the equipment ... was his property," Martinez told a radio interviewer Monday. "I didn't know that."
Pressed further, Martinez denied the police had received equipment from Rodriguez Orejuela.
"It's not true," Martinez said. "It was government equipment."
Mark Bowden, author of the best seller Killing Pablo, which tells of the hunt for Escobar, said Monday that Rodriguez Orejuela's claims are believable.
"It's entirely possible," Bowden said in a telephone interview from Pennsylvania. "Essentially the government of Colombia got in bed with the Cali cartel to get Escobar."
Rodriguez Orejuela, in the interview with the radio station W, said he opened a communications channel to then President Virgilio Barco, who died in 1997, after being threatened by Escobar in 1987.
ASSISTANCE
The Cali drug lord said he wanted to give the government information about Escobar in order to bring down his rival. Rodriguez Orejuela said the Cali cartel also gave "logistical assistance" to the Search Bloc, the police unit that hunted and killed Escobar in his home city of Medellin.
His voice cracking with emotion, Rodriguez Orejuela insisted he is innocent of US charges he continued trafficking after 1997, when he was in a Colombian prison.
But he apologized for having trafficked cocaine before then. The Cali cartel, run by Rodriguez Orejuela and his brother Miguel, controlled 80 percent of the world's cocaine trade during its heyday in the mid 1990s.
"I want to ask for forgiveness," Rodriguez Orejuela said in the interview. "The truth is that I am very sorry."
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not