MAP's index for the series: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n000/a251.html

Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia

LOS PEPES' KILLINGS PUT HEAT ON ESCOBAR

Chapter 18 of a continuing serial

By January 1993, the Americans directing the search for Pablo Escobar had
managed to produce elaborate organizational charts for his Medellin drug
cartel. The charts were displayed in the secret vault at the U.S. Embassy
in Bogota and inside the Delta Force outpost in Medellin.

Some of the information had been gleaned from months of electronic
eavesdropping on Escobar and his associates by Centra Spike, the secret
U.S. Army unit. Some had been coerced from people interrogated by Col. Hugo
Martinez and his police Search Bloc, and some came from informants
recruited by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Search Bloc to
work in Medellin. Of these, according to an informant known as "Rubin,"
some were members of Los Pepes, the death squad that was methodically
killing Escobar's hit men, relatives, lawyers and business associates.

The embassy's charts laid out Escobar's financial network, his businesses,
his extended family, his legal teams. Many of those on the charts were not
known to be criminals, or had not been indicted for crimes, but they were
part of the mountain that propped up the drug lord. Such information would
have been useful to a group like Los Pepes, and more than one American at
the embassy believed it was finding its way to them.

The pattern of Los Pepes' hits corresponded neatly to the charts, and it
wasn't just whom they were killing, but whom they were not. Some of the top
names on the embassy's organizational charts were now under almost constant
surveillance - and seemed immune to Los Pepes.

"It sure seemed to us like they knew who we were watching most closely,
because they left those people alone," one of the Centra Spike operators said.

After a hiatus following the first dramatic raids on Escobar's properties
the previous autumn, Los Pepes went on a killing rampage. The group had
actually been killing people quietly for months, but now a decision was
made to go public. On Feb. 3, the body of Luis Isaza, a low-level Medellin
cartel manager, was discovered in Medellin with a sign around his neck:
"For working for the narco-terrorist and baby-killer Pablo Escobar. For
Colombia. Los Pepes."

Four other low-level cartel workers were found murdered in the city that
day. The next day the bodies of two men known to be Escobar's business
associates were discovered. There were more murders the next day, and the
next, and the next. It was a controlled bloodbath. All of the victims had
one thing in common - Pablo Escobar.

Among them was a former director of the Colombian National Police, Carlos
Casadiego, who had been publicly linked to the Medellin cartel. On Feb. 17,
one of the dead was Carlos Ossa, the man thought to be financing Escobar's
day-to-day operations.

On the same day Ossa's body was found, a government warehouse burned to the
ground, destroying Escobar's collection of 17 antique and luxury cars,
valued at more than $4 million. The vehicles had been seized by Colombian
police in 1989, but it was assumed that Escobar would one day reclaim them.

Fidel Castano, a paramilitary leader cooperating in the search, told the
Americans in Medellin that Escobar was now in bad shape because so many of
his men had been killed or jailed. A memo by DEA agent Javier Pena that
February quoted Castano:

"Escobar was having trouble getting his hands on cash as he was spending a
great deal of money in his present war with the government of Colombia."

The day Ossa's body was found, one of Escobar's most notorious assassins,
Carlos Alzate, turned himself in. A day later, a man thought to be one of
Escobar's chief money launderers, Luis Londono, was found murdered with a
Los Pepes sign around his neck. Two weeks later, Jose Posada, the man Ossa
had replaced, also surrendered.

As the pace of killings and surrenders mounted, Los Pepes publicly offered
cash rewards for information on Escobar and his key associates and began
broadcasting threats against the drug lord's family.

American soldiers and agents in Medellin believed there was a direct
connection between the Search Bloc and Los Pepes. They observed men they
associated with the death squad meeting with officers at the Search Bloc
base. The men carried radios and appeared to maintain communications links
with Col. Martinez's men.

DEA agent Pena knew their leader only by the name Don Berna, a stooped, fat
man with buck teeth and bad skin who always had pretty girlfriends and wore
an expensive watch. Don Berna had been at the compound from the earliest
days after Escobar's escape. He presented Pena with a gold watch as a gift
of friendship.

Col. Martinez, now a general, denies all this. He calls Los Pepes
criminals, former associates of Escobar's who turned against him,
originally working as informants, and then as killers.

"They began to employ against Pablo Escobar the same kind of terror he
employed," Martinez said recently. "Pablo Escobar would set off a bomb in
Bogota, and Los Pepes would set three against Escobar's interests, his
family, or the criminal group he headed. It was a black spot on the Search
Bloc, because Pablo Escobar manipulated the media very well. Whether
writing or speaking, he always publicly claimed that the Search Bloc was in
fact Los Pepes. However, Los Pepes and our group did not share any links at
all."

In any case, it was clear that the vigilante group had spooked Escobar more
than anything the government had been able to do. One sign that the
fugitive was feeling the heat came Feb. 19, when Pena learned from the
prosecutor's office in Medellin that Escobar intended to send his children
to Miami. Escobar's wife, Maria Victoria, had purchased tickets for their
son, Juan Pablo; their daughter, Manuela; and a woman friend named Doria
Ochoa on an Avianca flight scheduled to leave Medellin at 9:30 a.m.

Ambassador Morris Busby moved fast. He believed that Escobar's most
vulnerable pressure point was his family. If they were tucked away in
relative safety in the United States, it would ease a tremendous daily
psychological burden on the fugitive.

Meeting with Colombian Defense Minister Raphael Pardo at his residence
early the next day, Busby explained that he did not want the family to leave.

They had visas to enter the United States, but Busby wanted them stopped.
Since they had been issued tourist visas, Pardo and the ambassador
discussed turning them back because what they were doing, in fact, was
fleeing from danger. This could not be called "tourism."

Then Busby's public affairs officer suggested, "Why don't we poke fun at
him?" Why not turn them away on the grounds that children under the age of
18 could not travel to the United States without both parents?

DEA agent Pena was at the airport in Medellin when the children arrived,
surrounded by bodyguards and accompanied by Ochoa. Manuela carried a small,
fluffy white dog. They were allowed to board the plane before police moved
in. Three of the family's bodyguards were arrested, and four others fled.
The Escobar children and Ochoa were escorted off the plane.

It created a raucous scene in the airport. Doria Ochoa argued vehemently
with Pena, who took their passports. Juan Pablo, a tall, chubby
16-year-old, joined in the commotion.

Manuela sat down on the floor in the terminal and quietly petted and cooed
to her dog. Pena felt sorry for her. She had a kerchief around her head,
covering her ears, and Pena remembered a bomb blast that had reportedly
damaged her hearing.

He eventually handed back the passports and the Colombian police informed
Ochoa that they would not be allowed to fly.

The U.S. Embassy took out newspaper ads the next day explaining that Juan
Pablo and Manuela could obtain visas if both parents, Pablo and Maria
Victoria, showed up in person to apply at the embassy.