Roberto Escobar, considered the No. 2 leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel, surrendered to authorities Friday and joined his billionaire brother behind bars, a court official said.
He was the seventh cartel member to turn himself in since Wednesday, when cartel boss Pablo Escobar entered a specially designed luxury prison.The surrenders began just hours after Colombia banned extraditions. In exchange for their surrender and confessions, they also become eligible for reduced jail terms.
Colombia has portrayed the surrenders as victories in its 34-month-old war on traffickers. But international enforcement officials believe other leaders will take over the Medellin organization's business, or that the group could still be run from prison by the jailed drug lords.
Roberto Escobar, 44, arrived in a caravan of seven vehicles at the new traffickers' jail in his hometown of Envigado, near Medellin, the Criminal Court official said. Escobar surrendered with another cartel member, Gustavo Gonzalez, the official said.
The army's fourth brigade lists Escobar as the No. 2 man in the cartel to his younger brother. Authorities say Roberto Escobar had recently become Pablo's closest confidant after the surrender or killing of other drug bosses.
Pablo Escobar, 41, has been held responsible for hundreds of murders in Colombia. No information was available on what role if any Roberto Escobar played in the Medellin gangs' terrorist attacks.
Other cartel members who have surrendered since Wednesday include Valentin de Jesus Taborda, the cartel's finance chief, and John Jairo Velasquez, who authorities say directed the cartel's gangs of hired killers.
According to a written note Pablo Escobar gave to a local television reporter Thursday, 10 more cartel members will soon surrender as well.
The Medellin cartel was believed responsible for about half of the estimated 600 to 800 tons of cocaine shipped annually from Colombia.
Aside from assuring no extradition and a reduced jail term, the government allowed Pablo Escobar to choose his own jail and dictate security arrangements there.
The jail, set in a lush pine forest on a mountain surrounding Envigado, has huge bedrooms with private baths, a soccer field, a game room, lawns and a panoramic view of the Medellin valley. Prisoners may move around freely throughout most of the jail and the grassy areas outside.
In an editorial Thursday, Bogota's El Espectador newspaper said that "what has happened in these days is the surrender not to the state, but of the state."
U.S. officials, while welcoming Escobar's surrender, have said they will be watching closely to see what kind of sentence the drug lord receives.
Court authorities said Escobar would likely spend no more than eight years in jail, if that much.
On Friday, the Colombian government took out an ad in the Washington Post with the photographs of the country's most notorious drug traffickers, Carlos Lehder, Jorge Luis Ochoa, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, Fabio Ochoa and Pablo Escobar.
"For years they were drug lords. Now, they're dead or in jail," said the ad.