One of the founders of the Medellin drug cartel has returned to Colombia after serving more than 20 years in prison in the US for drug trafficking.
Fabio Ochoa Vazquez, now 67, was deported by the US government and landed in Bogotá on Monday as a free man.
Ochoa was one of the founders of the notorious cartel and was the senior lieutenant of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The Medellín cartel dominated the cocaine trade and waged a violent campaign against the Colombian state before Escobar was assassinated in 1993.
Upon his arrival in Bogota, immigration officials checked Ochoa's fingerprints against their database, the country's immigration agency said.
Confirming that he was not wanted by Colombian authorities, it said Ochoa had been released “to be reunited with his family”.
Amidst a sea of reporters at the airport terminal, Ochoa was greeted by his relatives and hugged his daughter.
In 2001 Ochoa was flown to the US after he was arrested in Colombia in 1999. along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.
He had already served time in prison in Colombia in the early 1990s for his role as one of the bosses of the Medellin cartel. Along with his brothers, he was the first major trafficker to turn himself in under a program that protected cartel members from extradition to the United States if they pleaded guilty to minor crimes in Colombia.
Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again during the so-called Millennium Operation for his involvement in the cocaine smuggling business in the United States in the late 1990s.
In 2003 Ochoa was sentenced to more than 30 years in a US court for his involvement in the cartel, which imported an average of 30 tonnes of cocaine into the US each month between 1997 and 1999.
In the 1980s, he was one of the top operators in Escobar's ring in Medellin, supplying 80% of the US cocaine market in its prime.
The defunct Medellin cartel, along with the Cali cartel, was one of the most powerful and feared drug networks of the 1980s.
His violent campaigns of bombings and assassinations led to the suspension of extraditions of drug suspects between Colombia and the US, before they were resumed in 1997.