Carlos Lehder

**Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas** (born September 7, 1949) is a German-Colombian former drug lord who was co-founder of the Medellín Cartel. He was released from prison in the United States after 33 years in 2020. Born in Armenia, Colombia, Lehder eventually ran a cocaine transport empire on Norman's Cay island, 210 miles (340 km) off the Florida coast in the central Bahamas.

Lehder was one of the founding members of Muerte a Secuestradores ("MAS"), a paramilitary group whose focus was to retaliate against the kidnappings of cartel members and their families by the guerrillas.

## Biography

### Early Life

Carlos Lehder is of mixed German-Colombian descent. His father, Klaus Wilhelm Lehder, was an engineer who emigrated from Germany to Armenia, Colombia in 1928, where he participated in the construction of several buildings which had elevators, a rather modern and unusual characteristic at that place and time. When he married Helena Rivas, the daughter of a jeweller from Manizales, he changed his name to Guillermo Lehder. Guillermo and Helena had four sons, with Carlos Enrique, born on September 7, 1949, being the third.

In Armenia, Colombia, the family owned a small inn called Pensión Alemana (which would later inspire Carlos to have his own luxurious Posada Alemana hotel), where German immigrants would regularly meet.

### Criminal Career

While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States.

Using a small stolen plane and a professional pilot, the pair began to fly cocaine into the United States via the Bahamas, in the process increasing their financial resources and building connections and trust with Colombian suppliers, while spreading money around among Bahamian government officials for political and judicial protection.

In the late 1970s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania and his secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as an all-purpose headquarters for his operations.

As Lehder paid or forced the local population to leave, and began to assume total control of the island, Norman's Cay became his lawless private fiefdom. At the height of his operation, 300 kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island daily, and Lehder's personal wealth mounted into the billions.

## Downfall

Other major Medellín Cartel associates fled to the protection of Manuel Noriega in Panama, but when Pablo Escobar discovered Noriega was plotting to betray him to the U.S. in return for amnesty, the cartel associates then fled to Nicaragua to seek the assistance of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega.

A hypothesis supported by Jhon Jairo Velásquez, better known as "Popeye", the head assassin of Pablo Escobar, is that fellow members of the Medellín Cartel wanted him out of the picture due to his radical military-like behavior, which they believed would jeopardize their cocaine empire, and so Escobar himself provided Lehder's whereabouts to the police, leading to Lehder's capture.

Three years after that, Lehder wrote a letter to a federal district judge, complaining that the government had reneged on a deal to transfer him to a German prison.

According to journalist and author Tamara S. Inscoe-Johnson, who worked on the Lehder defense during the time in question, Lehder was simply transferred to another prison and has continued to be held in WITSEC, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' version of the federal Witness Protection Program.

Lehder appeared pro se, arguing that the United States failed to carry out its obligations under a cooperation agreement he had entered into with the United States Attorney's Office, after he held up his end of the deal.

In May 2007, Lehder requested the Supreme Court of Colombia and the Colombian government to intervene in order to comply with the extradition agreement established between Colombia and the US, which stated that a maximum sentence of 30 years would be applied to any extradited Colombian citizen.

Lehder argued that, having already served 20 years in prison, which corresponded to two-thirds of the 30-year maximum time stated in the treaty, he had completed his legal sentence and should therefore be released.

In May 2008, Lehder's lawyer declared to El Tiempo that a habeas corpus petition had been filed, alleging that Lehder's cooperation agreement had been violated and that "a court in Washington" had less than 30 days to respond to the notice.

On June 24, 2015, Lehder wrote a letter to then-President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, in which he requested mediation with the United States to be allowed to return to Colombia.