Notorious drug lord Fabio Ochoa lands in Colombia after release

On his arrival in Bogota, immigration officials ran Ochoa’s fingerprints through their database, the country’s immigration agency said.

Confirming that he is not wanted by Colombian authorities, it said that Ochoa was freed “to be reunited with his family”.

Amid a sea of reporters in the airport terminal, Ochoa was greeted by his relatives and hugged his daughter.

In 2001, Ochoa was flown to the US after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.

He had already served a jail sentence in Colombia in the early 90s for his role as one of bosses of the Medellin cartel. Along with his brothers, he was the first major trafficker to surrender under a programme that protected cartel members from extradition to the US if they pleaded guilty to minor offences in Colombia.

Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested once again during the so-called Millennium operation over his involvement in the cocaine smuggling business in the US in the late 1990s.

In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced to more than 30 years in a US court for his involvement in the cartel that brought an average of 30 tonnes of cocaine into the US each month between 1997 and 1999.