EX-COLOMBIAN DRUGLORD CONVICTED OF CONSPIRACY

MIAMI -- A leader of a 1980s Colombian drug cartel was convicted Wednesday
of rejoining a smuggling network after he was released from prison in his
homeland and given amnesty.

Fabio Ochoa, a leader of the defunct Medellin cartel, is the most prominent
Colombian drug suspect to face trial in the United States since the two
countries resumed extraditions in 1997.

He faces a possible life prison sentence on two federal drug conspiracy
charges alleging he joined and advised a 30-ton-a-month smuggling network
that united Colombian suppliers and Mexican distributors from 1997 to 1999.

Ochoa dropped to his knees in the courtroom while his attorney polled the
jury, which took five hours to reach its verdict.

Prosecutors had little evidence connecting Ochoa, 46, to the Bogota- based
network led by Alejandro Bernal. In a case with 1,500 hours of Colombian
police tapes, Ochoa's voice was caught on only one three-hour segment in
Bernal's bugged office June 16, 1999.

"He's made a life and a career and a king's fortune by being very careful,"
prosecutor Ed Ryan told jurors in closing arguments Tuesday. "People don't
get to be at his level by making stupid mistakes."

The defense insisted Ochoa socialized with traffickers but did not return
to the life he abandoned in 1990 by joining a Colombian amnesty program and
serving five years in prison. They said it was not Ochoa's voice on the
tapes from Bernal's office, and taps on two of Ochoa's phones produced no
evidence for trial.

The strongest evidence against Ochoa came from Bernal and three other
co-defendants, who cooperated with prosecutors in hopes of getting lighter
sentences.

They said Ochoa attended key meetings at what prosecutors said was "the
Wal-Mart of drug trafficking," and was set to receive profits on 110- and
220-pound amounts on two multi-ton cocaine shipments and suggested air
drops as a safe way of getting drug profits back to Colombia.

Defense attorney Roy Black maintained the government was desperate to get
its hands on a man it blames for smuggling tons of cocaine into the United
States in the 1970s and 1980s.

Black urged jurors in closing arguments not to convict Ochoa for his past,
saying: "He's paid the price for that. He should not be convicted again for
something he's already been convicted of, punished for and put in prison."

Ochoa has been in jail since his arrest in October 1999. His extradition
and trial came as the United States pumped nearly $2.5 billion in aid into
Colombia in the past four years, mostly to fight drugs 39 years into a war
with rebel groups.

Ochoa's father gained world acclaim as a breeder of Paso Fino horses. Three
sons became leaders of the Medellin cartel, and Fabio Ochoa is credited
with creating a waterproof blue box for air dropping cocaine close to U.S.
shores.

He served five years in Colombian prisons in the early 1990s under a
program intended to crush drug barons after years of cartel-ordered
bombings and assassinations.

Colombia's elected leaders and the military view rebels as drug-
trafficking terrorists with no political agenda. But Ochoa's trial drew
drug and arms connections between Bernal and anti-rebel paramilitary groups.