Michael Jackson, George W. Bush and other incredible kidnappings that Pablo Escobar tried

Pablo Escobar, the most bloodthirsty drug trafficker in the history of Colombia, has committed more than 620 attacks against the civilian population, claiming more than 46,000 lives, including at least 550 police officers. paid to kill. And one of his worst war tactics to put pressure on the state was kidnapping. Several politicians and journalists were held in captivity, some managed to save, others did not have a chance. It was so much the power of the chief of the Medellin cartel that He tried to catch personalities from the world.

The most well-known kidnapping in Colombia by the capo is probably that of the journalist Diana Turbay, daughter of former President Julio Caesar Turbay Ayala. She was captured in 1990 after being deceived in an interview with the guerrilla leader, the priest Manuel Pérez Martínez. It lasted a little less than five months on a farm in Copacabana, in the municipality of Antioquia. And he died in 1991 during a rescue operation when he received a rifle bullet in his back that pierced his kidney and left liver.

Other personalities who managed to get out of captivity alive were the former president Andrés Pastrana, then candidate journalist for the mayor of Bogotá. John Jairo Velásquez, his killer, stalked him to his campaign headquarters. Popeye, who posed as leader of Antioquia who supported his election. Until 1988, he arrived with 10 other men who posed as members of the M-19 and took him to Escobar, who wanted to put pressure on the government to put an end to l & # 39; extradition.

For the same purpose, Escobar kidnapped in 1990 the newspaper's editor-in-chief The weather, Francisco Santos, current ambbadador of Colombia to the United States, who spent eight months in captivity. Two years ago, in 1988, he had already kidnapped lawyer Carlos Mauro Hoyos while he was traveling to José María Córdoba airport in Rionegro (Antioquia), who would be killed shortly thereafter. after.

And the money and power that the coke had given him made him believe that he was invincible. In the midst of his desire to stop extradition He planned unsuccessfully the kidnapping and murder of US President George W. Bush at the time. But also, maybe for fun, he wanted to have the king of pop Michael Jackson and the daughter of Spanish singer Julio Iglesias, Chabeli. In addition, he wanted to kill Ricardo Gareca, then player of the America of Cali, rival of his national club of athletics.

When George W. Bush took office in the US government in 1989, his first action was to change his drug strategy. "Before, they intercepted drug-laden ships and planes on the North American border, now they had decided to point to the South American root of the problem: the narco chiefs", describes Mark Bowden in the book" Kill Pablo Escobar ".

The Colombian authorities have devoted themselves to the dismantling of laboratories and the destruction of illicit crops, while in the United States they have confiscated mansions and properties. At that time, Pablo Escobar was already the most wanted man in the country, thanks to the block of research and his enemies of Los Pepes. He therefore proposed to the government an agreement in which he went, with his laboratories, he was not extradited and left part of his fortune.

President Virgilio Barco badyzed the proposal so as not to compromise his relations with the United States. Escobar attempted to hire a brother of Jeb Bush, the youngest son of President Bush, to intercede with his father. But the agreement was concluded until February 1990, when several leaders met in Cartagena to talk about the fight against drugs. Bush had convinced them not to accept the truces and to capture him alive or dead.

Bush became Escobar's "stone in the shoe", and then rumors were heard that could harm his life. They could never be verified, but the closest attempt would be led by the badbadin Dandenis Muñoz Mosquera, aka "La Quica", who is still in an American prison. In 1991, he had arrived in New York for a secret mission, while a meeting at the United Nations had been held with several world leaders, including George W. Bush.

& # 39; The Quica & # 39; was trapped in a phone booth in Queens, coordinating the alleged attack, we thought at that moment that it could even be a bomb. It is there that the DEA agents arrived, who captured it for the first time for having fake documents. Already detained, he had previously been charged with drug trafficking and was ordered to participate in the explosion of the Avianca 203 aircraft in 1989, which had killed 110 people.

Michael Jackson was already the king of pop when Escobar organized ostentatious parties in his hacienda in Naples with the best Colombian artists of the moment. The capo was the richest man in Colombia and one of the richest in the world. For this reason, when his son Juan Pablo, now known as Juan Sebastián Marroquín, proposed to him to appeal to an international artist, he decided, furthermore, I was going to kidnap the American singer.

That's what Juan Pablo Escobar himself told in a TV show to Spanish journalist Ana Rosa. Tired of seeing the same singers every year at parties held at the Naples Farm, he had asked her to take him near his idol, singer Michael Jackson, whom the capo had also admired. The idea was to act and leave the same night because this presentation would bring in four or five million dollars.

But the budget was already limited by the persecution of the drug trafficker. So he had the good idea of hire him to extort him afterwards. He would charge him $ 60 million for letting him leave the Napoles hacienda, in order to recover more than the money originally invested. The plan was already designed, he would have a landing strip for the landing of his private plane and he would prepare the scene on the football field.

But everything collapsed when the Colombian authorities identified the Naples property as belonging to Escobar and extinguished it. That day, the corporal escaped in a helicopter with his family when police and army officers arrived at his most valuable property.

Escobar was increasingly encircled by the research block that the Colombian government had exclusively for its capture, with the support of the DEA and the CIA, and Los Pepes, its main enemies of the Cali cartel, paramilitaries and terrorists. Old partners. His badets were confiscated and he was forced to stop producing and trafficking cocaine. So he had to find another way to get money, and he offered to do extortion kidnappings.

In this way, he thought of kidnaps Chabeli Iglesias in Miami, daughter of Spanish singer Julio Iglesias that Escobar admired and listened and, in New York, one of the sons of the magnate of the industry Julio Mario Santodomingo. His idea was to kidnap them and bring them to Colombia on a private flight, but his plan never came to fruition. That's what his son Juan Pablo would tell in one of his books.

Remember the newspaper The world that after the abduction of her grandfather Julio Iglesias Puga, Chabeli, a 14-year-old girl, was transferred to Miami by her father in 1985, along with her brothers Julio Jr. and Enrique, to protect them criminals who wanted to do the same. . At the same time, Escobar had already used the kidnapping to fund his war against the state and put pressure on the government. It was when he captured Andrés Pastrana.

Money and the war against the state were not the only motivations of Escobar to kidnap personalities of the country. Strategy would also be one of his tactics for revenge. So he thought when he wanted to capture and kill the Argentine footballer of the time Ricardo Gareca, who played at América de Cali, the team of his enemies of the cartel of Cali and great rival of his national club of athletics.

At the time of the drug boom in Colombia, the big bosses bought their favorite teams, kidnapped players, bought referees, fixed matches. Escobar controlled Deportivo Independiente Medellín and Atlético Nacional; his companion Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, aka the Mexican, that of Millonarios; and the brothers Rodríguez Orejuela, responsible for the cartel of Cali, America of Cali.

Gareca has always been in the line of fire of Pablo Escobar because he was the figure of America's Cali, confessed a few years ago one of his main killers, aka Popeye. He even considered putting a car bomb at the entire cast of this club. That too, in retaliation for the brothers Rodriguez Orejuela for putting a car bomb in the building of Monaco where the family of the capodist resided in Medellín.