Back to The Barricades

Colombia's most wanted criminal ups the stakes in the bloody drug war

WHAT HE WANTS, APPARENTLY, IS RESPECT. IN HIDing since last July when he escaped from his comfy cell in a prison at Envigado, Medellin drug boss Pablo Escobar has been trying to negotiate a conditional surrender. Colombian President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo has said no, choosing instead, with the U.S., to place more than $3 million in bounties on Escobar's head and stepping up police pressure. Last week Escobar fired back, announcing that he would set up a private army, the Antioquia Rebel Movement, to counter the "barbaric methods" of special antinarcotics police forces. The government dismissed the threat as an attempt...

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