His first shipments of cocaine to the U.S. were smuggled in suitcases; he even used his mother as a courier. From humble beginnings as a small-time pot dealer in New York in the early 1970s, Carlos Lehder Rivas rose to become a pivotal figure in the international drug trade, commanding a squadron of | airplanes that is said to have brought 15 tons of coke into the U.S. every month. Last week the onetime drug lord went on trial in a heavily guarded federal courthouse in Jacksonville.
Lehder, said prosecuting U.S. Attorney Robert Merkle, "was to cocaine transportation what Henry Ford...
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