RISE AND FALL OF THE COCAINE KING

Pablo Escobar was the world's most infamous drug lord, responsible for
kidnappings, bombings and murder on an industrial scale. How did he
get away with it for so long?

I met "Popeye" - Pablo Escobar's head of security and one of the few
survivors of the Medellin cartel - by chance when I visited Colombia's
new state-of-the-art prison, Valledupar. I found him reading Homer's
Iliad in the high-security wing. He was my introduction to the myth of
Escobar, "cocaine king", sometime politician and wholesale murderer.

According to those closest to him, Escobar was involved in storming
Colombia's supreme court in 1985, killing half the country's top
judges, blowing an airliner out of the sky, bombing the headquarters
of Colombian intelligence, putting a bounty on the head of every
policeman in the country and, ultimately, evading 13,000 raids during
an unprecedented manhunt that lasted almost two years.

I was in Colombia pursuing a photographic project on "Narcotecture" -
buildings built with drugs money. Escobar's home in Medellin, a
six-storey concrete bunker, was last on my list. The building is now
the administrative HQ of Colombia's public prosecutors, and I was
apprehended in the street outside as I took photos. I explained to the
boss, Manuel Dario Aristizabal, what I was doing and he proudly
informed me that the office we sat in used to be Pablo's bedroom. He
had a bag of Escobar photographs - would I like to see them?

The photographs showed items and scenes discovered at Pablo's private
Medellin prison. There were guns and sex toys, and also more homely
pictures of Pablo playing with his family. There seemed some
discrepancy between the gangster myth - "the most dangerous criminal
the world has ever seen" - and the reality. I decided to investigate
further, to talk to people who had known him - and to unearth more
photographs.

Dona Hermilda, Pablo's mother, then 88, told us of the charming
gentleman son she had raised. Pablo's cousin, Jaime Gaviria, and his
old schoolmate, "El Chino", told us of the early days of the cocaine
trade. It was important to understand, they said, that people's
attitudes had fundamentally changed towards cocaine. When Pablo was
first getting his business organised, people in Colombia believed
cocaine would soon be legalised. A "white gold" rush was on in
preparation for a legal business. "The first time I saw him... he was
like a god," Popeye recalled. Escobar challenged the state, declared
war on the elites that had ruled Colombia for decades and even dared
aspire to be president.

Pablo was born in 1949. At school, he told Gaviria, "I might be poor,
but I am not going to die poor." He began in the cocaine business
smuggling small quantities of coca paste from Peru to Colombia. He was
arrested in 1976, but avoided prosecution after the two secret police
officers responsible for his arrest were murdered.

Gaviria said, "Pablo always said that it was the young gringos from
the peace corps who started the cocaine bonanza. They began to invade
this country, sent by the government up there, saying they had come in
search of peace, but they ended up in search of cocaine." The
popularity of cocaine in the clubs of Miami and New York in the late
70s and early 80s propelled Escobar from a backstreet crime boss to
one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

He came to public attention in the early 80s, during his campaign for
election to Colombia's congress. His most zealous critic was Rodrigo
Lara Bonilla, the justice minister, who favoured extradition to the US
(where drug traffickers found the justice system less responsive to
their bribes and threats). Escobar had Lara Bonilla assassinated, I
was told.

From 1985 to 1988 the battle focused on intimidating the judiciary
into ruling extradition unconstitutional. A tidal wave of violence was
unleashed, claiming the lives of 1,000 police officers. For every dead
officer, 10 gang members or innocent civilians were killed, many by
police death squads.

Eventually, Escobar surrendered to the Colombian justice system, but
only after forcing the government to accept his terms - including
immunity from extradition and a purpose-built prison.

His personal prison, La Catedral, was located at the end of a long and
windy dirt track where it could be defended from attack by Escobar's
enemies. Guards were bribed to ensure the free movement of visitors.
It was a wonderful time for everyone, according to his sister, Luz
Maria. "We had lovely family gatherings at La Catedral." It was only
when he heard he was to be moved to another prison that Escobar escaped.

He was on the run again, pursued by an elite Colombian police unit and
enemies in the Colombian underworld. In the end, it was his fondness
for his family that led to his downfall. He was shot dead after police
traced him to his hide-out as he talked with his son.