Aware of the threat, not just to him but to his wife and three little children, Lara beefed up security. "I am a dangerous minister for those who act outside the law," Lara said. only hope that they don't take me by surprise." Despite the tough talk, Lara called the US embassy and excitedly revealed that he was getting transferred out of the country to work as the ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
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"You'll be safe there," the US Ambassador said. "All the terrorists are in the government."
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As the transfer would take thirty days, Lara said he needed a place for him and his family to hide at because he felt that the Colombian government couldn't protect him anymore. The US embassy offered to put him in a Texas safe house owned by a rich businessman for as long as he needed it.
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On April 30, 1984, Lara thanked a journalist friend for publishing an article about his work. "I am going to be killed today, but that article can be my will for the Justice Department." After playing his friend some samples of the fifty death threats that he'd received that morning, Lara said, "If I don't answer this phone, it will be because I am dead."
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In the afternoon, Iván and Byron visited the shrine of Santa María Auxiliadora, near Medellín, to say a prayer. For good luck, Byron put a picture of the Virgin Mary into his underwear. At 7 pm, they got on a Yamaha motorbike and headed to Bogotá, armed with grenades and a MAC-10.
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Sat on a back seat, Lara was stuck in traffic with his bullet-proof vest next to him.
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Iván and Byron stopped at an address they'd been given earlier that day. They were told people were talking about them in Medellin, which was code for "Find Lara and kill him." On the hunt for a white Mercedes-Benz limo, they found the roads still jammed. It was around dusk when they spotted Lara. Weaving around cars, they homed in from the rear and slowed down.
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After extracting the MAC-10 from his jacket, Iván took aim at the figure in the back of the limo. Within seconds, the MAC-10 emptied its magazine, shattering the rear window, hitting Lara fatally seven times in the head, chest, arm and neck. Lara's escort limo pursued the assailants. A bullet hit the Yamaha's gas tank, setting it on fire. The motorbike crashed into a curb. Machine-gun fire exploded Iván's head. Next to the Yamaha, he dropped dead. Hit in the arm, Byron was arrested.
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The president and his cabinet stayed up until 3 am, discussing what to do. No cabinet minister had ever been assassinated in Colombia. Perhaps cocaine wasn't just an American problem after all. Trafficking was ruining Colombia's reputation in the eyes of the world. With the justice minister gone, it would appear that the president had lost control of the country. Lara's death swung them in favour of extradition. In an emergency radio broadcast, the president declared war on the traffickers and said that drugs were "the most serious problem that Colombia has had in its history."
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In the Rotunda of the Capitol Building, thousands visited Lara's closed coffin, which military guards took to the National Cathedral. Outside, mourners from all sections of society were crying and chanting that they loved Lara. In the cathedral, emotions ran high. Amid the top brass from the military and the government, the president appeared tense.
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A plane transported Lara to his home city, where he was buried. At the funeral, the president said "We have reached a point where we must reflect on what is our nation. What does the word citizen mean? Stop! Enemies of humanity! Colombia will hand over criminals wanted in other countries, so that they may be punished as an example." His eulogy received a standing ovation.
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On May 8, 1984, the president signed an extradition order for Carlos Lehder. Traffickers would be tried in military courts and denied access to bail. Prison sentences would be increased, with limited possibility of parole. Suspected traffickers would have their gun permits cancelled.
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Immediately, hundreds were arrested and jailed, including the Ochoa brothers' father, Fabio Sr. Property was seized. Helicopters landed at Hacienda Nápoles. With rifles and search dogs, troops in green battle fatigues stormed inside, provoking raucous cawing from Pablo's exotic birds. Seizing weapons and evidence, the troops trashed the property and handcuffed low-level workers, whom they lined up by a swimming pool. After the raid, they left the zoo animals to starve. Upon receiving complaints about the animals, the government reopened the zoo.
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With Lehder on the run in the jungle, his property deteriorated. Lacking an expensive diet of fresh horsemeat, his tigers withered. The Humane Society stepped in. As the property crumbled from fire and rain damage, only one thing survived: the naked statue of John Lennon.
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In response, the traffickers declared war on Colombia. All-out mayhem ensued: bombings, kidnappings, mass murders and death squads. The judge investigating Lara's death was killed.
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Hoping to weaken the cartel, the authorities targeted Lehder, as his extradition treaty had been signed. If they arrested him, they could swiftly send him to his fate in America. On his trail, they missed him by four days, a hundred miles south east of Bogotá. But this raised their hopes. Moving around with twenty-three aliases and three passports, including a German one, Lehder was unfazed. He called radio stations to rant and penned open letters, criticising American imperialism. Raiding a possible Lehder hideout in November 1984, the police found 230 kilos of cocaine. Sources gave more information about his whereabouts, but he remained elusive.
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In February 1985, Lehder authorised a Spanish TV crew to interview him at a hide-out. In army fatigues, a black vest and sporting a beard, he announced the formation of a 500,000-man army to defend national sovereignty. "The extradition problem has grown to become a problem of national liberation. It was the people who shot Lara Bonilla before he could _ with imperialism's help - send more than 300 Colombians en masse to be processed in the US." When asked whether it was wise to find inspiration in Hitler - who'd killed six million Jews - he replied, "That is misinformation. We know that there were never more than one million Jews in Germany.
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Half of the blood running through my body is German, right? In other words, if there is someone who can talk about Germany, it is not the Jew, it is the German! If one can talk about Colombia, it is the Colombian. It shall not be a Brazilian or a Czechoslovakian. Am I right?
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"I say with all honesty that Adolfo, along with six million soldiers, eliminated twenty-one million Communists, right? And he eliminated ten million Allied enemies. In other words, he, Adolfo, is and shall be - right? until someone surpasses him, he shall be the greatest warrior the world has ever seen." Despite his ramblings, his eyes were open to the aims of the US, which he described as being "guided by a military industry that forces the US to open fronts of war and fronts for the sale of arms, and one of the newest and most novel excuses [to open such fronts] is the struggle against drug trafficking."
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US weapons-manufacturer profiteering was even worse than Lehder had described. Not only were they profiting from fighting trafficker's, but through the CIA, they were accepting drug money as one of the biggest forms of payment for arms. In public, the US government was raising Pablo up the charts of enemy status in the War on Drugs, while in secret, the CIA was facilitating cocaine smuggling to finance a war in Nicaragua, cocaine that was flooding America. General Pinochet wasn't the only one fighting a War on Drugs so that he could profit from it personally. It had corrupted governments all over the world. Such covert activity needed constant smoke-screens, and a mass murderer such as Pablo was ideal. In the US media, his crimes allowed him to become the personification of the cocaine scourge, but journalists rarely mentioned that his empire existed because of a black market in cocaine worth billions that had been created by US drug laws; or that his weapons came from America. It was a no-lose situation for the Reagan-Bush administration. Even though they knew from America's earlier experiences with the prohibition of alcohol that taking down Pablo wouldn't alter the flow of drugs, fighting traffickers not only justified the military expenditure Lehder ranted about, but it enabled the US to extend its influence into Colombia, a country whose oil and other resources US corporations and bankers, perched like vultures, were eager to plunder.
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