Kingpin goes free
The week's news at a glance.
Bogotá
Gilberto Rodriquez Orejuela—once responsible for 80 percent of the world’s cocaine supply—walked out of a Colombian prison last week after a judge released him for good behavior. Rodriquez Orejuela had served just seven years of a 15-year sentence for running the infamous Cali cartel with his brother, Miguel. President Alvaro Uribe thwarted Miguel’s release by getting him sentenced to four more years for bribing a judge, but he couldn’t come up with any new charges to keep Gilberto behind bars. Uribe angrily vowed to champion stiffer sentencing laws to “free our country once and for all from this nightmare of having criminals lord it over a state of law.”
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