The story of the day Pablo Escobar went to court to get to a prison he built

Pablo Escobar, the most iconic name in the history of drug trafficking and crime in Colombia and one of the richest men in the world thanks to his cocaine trade, took June 19, 1991 a coldly calculated decision: surrender to justice in Colombia.

But, of course, spending his days in prison was not a hasty attitude but an oiled bargain to protect his life. He went to a prison with all the luxuries, just for himself and his henchmen. And he did so no less than the very day the Colombian government vote against extradition drug traffickers in the United States.

The whole delivery process for Pablo Escobar was like a movie. This June 19 at noon, National Constituent Assembly he had approved the non-extradition of Colombians. Fifty-one delegates voted yes; 13, no and 4 abstained.

A day marked forever

At four o’clock in the afternoon, in a jeep and with their faces covered, four of the lieutenants of the head of drug trafficking entered Envigado prison, including John Jairo Velázquez, considered the third man of the Medellín cartel. , recalls the chronicle of the daily The country.

Shortly after, the big news is known: Pablo Escobar Gaviria surrendered to Colombian justice. A helicopter picked him up from a mountainous location and jungle and transported him to Envigado prison, according to the priest. Rafael Garcia Herreros, a key man in this whole intrigue.

There was another version of how the chef du Medellin Cartel and the man most wanted in recent years by Colombian security agencies: the one who says that since eight in the morning, Pablo Escobar was inside. There he is said to have met Father Rafael García Herreros, the Attorney General of the nation, Carlos Arrieta, Governor Iván Echevarri and the Director of Criminal Investigations, Marta Hurtado.

They say that from the official office, Pablo Escobar went through step by step the debate and the voting process that eliminated extradition from Colombian law. Here is how the sentence imposed on the drug traffickers was carried out: “We prefer a grave in Colombia to a cell in the United States“.

A unique message

“Pablo is tired of his irregular life. He is a cornered man who wants to change his life. That is why he is determined to go to justice,” priest Rafael García Herreros had said two months earlier when, in to the surprise of Colombians, this religious began a process of rapprochement with the man designated as one of the great criminals in the history of Colombia.

In exchange for your voluntary abandonment, Pablo Escobar He demanded respectful treatment and guarantees for his life during his imprisonment. Come on if he had: armed in Envigado prison, called “The cathedral”, his bunker where he and his henchmen continued to run their criminal affairs.

In the biography of Pablo Escobar in 2004 (Ruiza, Fernández and Tamaro), we remember those years of lead and death that Colombia endured at the hands of the Medellín cartel. Is that the United States has seen more and more drug lords increasingly wanted to participate in politics, and lobbied the Colombian government to force the extradition of the leaders. Among them, Pablo Escobar.

But the mafia’s reaction was in its own way, criminal, sowing death and violence in its wake. There was a list called “The extraditable“, which included Escobar, who played all or nothing and embarked the country on a spiral of violence, with attacks on politicians and a spiraling wave of violence. Until June 19, 1991, Congress gave him safe conduct, by passing the law that prevented their delivery to the United States.

The role of Father García Herreros

Colombian priest Rafael García Herreros was not only known for creating Colombia’s oldest TV show (God’s minute), but rather this name went around the world because it was essential for Escobar to go to justice. There were rumors and criticism of Father García’s closeness to Escobar.

García Herreros, founder of the Minuto de Dios Corporation, was characterized by being a man of dialogue, and his last years of life gave them to seek a way out of the war led by the Medellín cartel and which left hundreds of deaths in the country . . .

The relationship between the priest and Escobar was shrouded in mysticism, they came to say it was a friendship. In fact, the same Colombian Episcopal Conference came to criticize the strange approach between García Herreros and Escobar: “One thing is conversion and repentance, and another is to present a criminal as an example,” the Catholic authority reminded him. , according to Axis 21. account of sites.

García Herreros founded the Minuto de Dios neighborhood in Bogotá and a non-profit entity that bears the same name. He was known in Colombia for the television space ‘El Minute de Dios’, which was broadcast before the news on the main channels. And it was on one of those buses in which he said that Pablo Escobar “wants to talk to me, a humble priest”.

It was in April 1991 that García published a strange message in ‘El Minute de Dios’. He said he was ready to speak with Pablo Escobar on a Caribbean beach, even at the risk of dying in a possible shootout. The intervention noted the following: “They told me he wanted to surrender. They told me you wanted to talk to me sea, O Coveñas sea! At five o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun goes down. What should I do? They tell me he’s tired of his life and his struggles, and I can’t tell anyone, my secret. However, it drowns me inside ”.

The priest also declared: “They tell me that he wants to speak to me, a humble priest, that I am neither bishop, nor canonist, nor even episcopal vicar. He tells me to believe in him, that he is a man of his word. I asked him if he was going to run away from me, for my part, he said no ”.

At the end of the speech broadcast throughout the country, the father admitted that he did not know what to do, and concluded with the popular phrase: “My God, we are placing in your hands this day which has passed, and the night. which is to come. ”García Herreros succeeded in securing the surrender of Pablo Escobar, but the drug dealer and criminal continued to commit crimes in“ La Catedral ”.

How? ‘Or’ Whator was it “The Cathedral”

“The cathedral”, the exclusive prison in which Pablo Andrés Escobar Gaviria entered, was in a village in the municipality of Envigado, neighboring the city of Medellín. And the reality is that behind the mask of “maximum security prison” they were hiding luxurious rooms, game rooms, a gym, a natural waterfall and even a soccer field, and opened the doors without restrictions to relatives, friends and associates of the drug trafficker. It is even said that Pablo Escobar himself fixed it. At that time, the media called it “Maximum Comfort Prison”.

With a privileged view over Medellín, Escobar controlled his gangster affairs, ordered assassinations and organized parties in which alcohol, drugs and women were wasted with his henchmen, some of them also ” detainees “in this prison.

When these activities were revealed by the press, President Gaviria was forced to transfer Escobar to a real prison, but “The Cocaine Tsar” learned of this decision and on the night of July 21, 1992 “fled” . He left for the prison funds, open and unsecured. He always did what he wanted. And that day he decided to flee.

With Escobar on the run, “La Catedral” remained empty and the residents of Envigado, convinced its walls hid a fortune, looted the building stone by stone for months. They never found anything.

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