Ex-kingpin accused of returning to drug trade in Colombia

MIAMI -- One of the biggest Colombian druglords ever brought to the United States to face justice goes on trial today under security so tight that the anonymous jurors will be driven back and forth to court in vans with tinted windows to protect their identities.

Fabio Ochoa Sanchez is accused of getting back into the cocaine business in the late 1990s after serving time for his role as one of the bosses of the now-defunct Medellin cartel, one of the most powerful and feared drug networks of the 1980s.

He is the most prominent drug defendant brought to the United States since Colombia resumed extraditions in 1997, after stopping them for most of the 1990s during a campaign of bombings and assassinations by the cartels.

Ochoa "is responsible for the destruction of countless lives," Asa Hutchinson, then head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said when Ochoa arrived in Miami in handcuffs. "His greed and ruthless behavior are unsurpassed, even among the most notorious traffickers of the cartel era."

Ochoa, who turns 46 this month, could get life in prison if convicted. He has been in a Miami jail since his extradition in September 2001.

Jury selection is set to begin today in federal court.

The jurors will not be sequestered. But U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore is keeping their names secret from both sides and renting the vans to drive them back and forth to court from an undisclosed assembly point each day.

Ochoa served five years in a Colombian prison in the 1990s for helping pioneer drug smuggling by air. Under the extradition treaty, the United States cannot try him for any of his cartel activities, including his alleged role in the 1986 hit on drug pilot and informant Barry Seal.

The case against him is built instead on allegations he got back into the cocaine business by joining up with a longtime friend and former cartel lieutenant, Alejandro Bernal Madrigal, in an operation that smuggled as much as 30 tons of the drug into this country per month.

Ochoa has denied returning to the cocaine business, proclaiming at the time of his 1999 arrest that he would be "stupid" to get into drugs again. Before his extradition, he erected billboards in Bogota and Medellin declaring: "Yesterday I made a mistake. Today I am innocent."

Four to eight other figures arrested in the case are expected to testify for the government, including ringleader Bernal, who struck a deal with prosecutors in April in hopes of winning leniency when he is sentenced. He could get up to life in prison.

Prosecutors also have hundreds of hours of tapes from Bernal's bugged Bogota office.

Defense attorney Roy Black and prosecutors refused to comment as the trial drew near.

In one generation, the Ochoa family went from world recognition in horse breeding to international infamy in cocaine smuggling as Fabio and two older brothers rose in the Medellin cartel under the cutthroat direction of Pablo Escobar.

Assassinations and bribes became a way of life. The cartel formed a group called Death to Kidnappers in 1981 after Ochoa's sister was abducted.

Prosecutors say a network of Colombian traffickers is now bankrolling a group called Murder to American Snitches.

A key piece of evidence in the case against Ochoa is a tape of the only meeting between him and Bernal in Bernal's office. But a transcript of the 3 1/2-hour Spanish conversation is open to interpretation by the government, Ochoa and Bernal.

The latest of six transcripts offered by prosecutors on the 1999 meeting calls into question whether it can even be considered a transcript.

The transcripts "constitute the expected testimony of government witnesses who were parties in the conversations," prosecutors said in court papers. "Translators hired by the government have not been able to hear all of the spoken words when listening to the recordings."

The defense says the transcripts have gone through changes so dramatic that the latest version should be discarded altogether. Quotations previously attributed to others now come from Ochoa's mouth.

Prosecutors also plan to call Max Mermelstein, a colorful 1980s- era informant who testified against deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Medellin kingpin Carlos Lehder. Both men are now behind bars.

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