Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, an aged chief of the Cali cartel – and bitter rival of Pablo Escobar – has died in a US jail, his lawyer mentioned on Wednesday.
Typically recognized by his alias ‘The Chessplayer,’ Rodríguez Orejuela, 83, helped lead the Cali cartel, which as soon as managed 80% of the worldwide cocaine market, in accordance with a report from the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
“The kids and spouse of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela regretfully inform that yesterday, Tuesday, Could 31 2022, at 6.54 pm, our father and husband died of a lymphoma,” the household mentioned in an announcement shared by Rodríguez’s daughter Alexandra.
The household deliberate to repatriate his stays to Colombia, the assertion mentioned.
Rodriguez Orejuela’s arrest by Colombian authorities in 1995 marked the start of the disintegration of the Cali cartel, which had smuggled huge quantities of cocaine from Colombia to the USA within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties.
He was extradited to the USA in 2004, and was serving his sentence at a federal jail in Butner, North Carolina.
In 2020, a choose denied him early launch on compassionate grounds. His legal professional, David O Markus, had mentioned on the time that the previous drug kingpin was struggling a spread of well being issues.
“We have been very unhappy to find out about his passing final evening,″ Markus mentioned. ″Our ideas and prayers are together with his household presently.”
Rodríguez Orejuela and his brother, Miguel, constructed an enormous prison enterprise that fought with Pablo Escobar and his allies within the Medellín cartel for management of Colombia’s drug commerce.
Not like Escobar who launched an all-out warfare on Colombian authorities and safety forces, the Cali cartel concentrated most of their violence on rival crime operations.
Additionally they confessed to financing political campaigns, together with that of Liberal Social gathering president Ernesto Samper in 1994, who has denied having any data of the donations on the time.
The Rodríguez Orejuela brothers have been captured in 1995 and sentenced to fifteen years in jail. At that time, Colombian regulation prohibited the extradition of its nationals, however beneath strain from the US, Colombia lifted that ban in 1997.
Nonetheless, in 2002, Rodríguez Orejuela was unexpectedly launched from jail after a controversial courtroom ruling upholding a choose’s choice to launch him after simply seven years in return for good behaviour and collaborating in work-study programmes. He was rearrested in 2003.
The brothers have been discovered to have been persevering with to site visitors from jail and prison prices have been filed in Miami and New York. In 2004, Gilberto was extradited; Miguel was extradited the subsequent yr.
