-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.killingpablo.com/content/killingpablo/philly/1047343150.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.killingpablo.com/content/killingpablo/philly/1047343150.htm"> Killing Pablo</A> ----- Incorruptible colonel rejoins Escobar pursuit By Mark Bowden INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Police Col. Hugo Martinez had spent nearly three years hunting Escobar before his infamous 1991 "surrender" to a luxury prison cell. (Akira Suwa / Inquirer) PHOTO GALLERIES Chapter Seven of a continuing serial Col. Hugo Martinez was delighted when he got the news, in Madrid, that Pablo Escobar had walked out of jail. No one knew better than the colonel what a charade that imprisonment had been. Martinez had spent nearly three years hunting Escobar before his infamous 1991 "surrender" to a luxury prison cell guarded by his cronies, which Martinez viewed as the evasive drug lord's most ingenious escape to date. Martinez had never met Escobar, but his life was inextricably entwined with the fugitive's. From 1989 to 1991, the colonel had been in charge of the first police campaign to capture Escobar. His efforts, though ultimately futile, were rewarded in 1991 with a comfortable post in Madrid, as military liaison to Spain. There was another, more urgent reason for his transfer: Escobar had tried several times to murder the colonel and his family in Colombia. On the very plane that took Martinez and his family from Bogota to Madrid, a bomb had been set to explode at a certain altitude. It was discovered, in flight, after the airline received a last-minute phone tip. The pilots held a very low altitude to the nearest airfield, where the bomb was found and removed. Now, in the summer of 1992, the Colombian and American governments had decided that with Escobar once again a fugitive, the man to lead the new, expanded hunt for him was Police Col. Hugo Martinez. It was a good time to leave Spain. Just a few months earlier, a car bomb had been discovered on the street outside the Colombian Embassy in Madrid, right where Martinez passed each day to work. The colonel avoided the street that day only because he had heard a radio report of police activity blocking the road. The police activity, of course, was the Madrid police bomb squad. The device was so complicated that they detonated it on the spot. Everyone knew who the target was. Martinez was asked to stay away from the embassy for a while. He took his wife and family on an extended camping trip, feeling impotent, isolated, pursued and angry. So long as Escobar remained in jail, there was nothing he could do. The drug boss' escape was a godsend, an opportunity to fight back again. Martinez was six years older than Escobar at 48, a point in life where a man feels it is now or never for his life's goals. He was quiet and bookish, with an aloof manner that seemed ill-suited to leading men in the field. Tall and fair-skinned, with a long face, high forehead and prominent nose, he towered over most of his comrades in the police command, and looked more European than Colombian. He had a wry sense of humor and a crooked smile, which leavened the cynicism of his long police career. When he was handed the first assignment to go after Escobar in 1989, Martinez knew all too well that he had been handed the short straw. The police commander in the district surrounding Medellin had just been murdered after arresting several members of Escobar's Medellin cartel. The magistrate who had signed Escobar's arrest order also had been killed, as had a reporter from one of Bogota's leading daily newspapers, El Espectador, who had written approvingly of the effort. There was a sense that Escobar could reach anyone, anywhere, at any time. Just days after Martinez had taken over the first hunt, a 220-pound car bomb exploded in Bogota, killing six people. The target of the blast, an outspoken police general, had somehow emerged unscathed from his armored limousine, its tires melted to the pavement. It didn't help that Medellin, Escobar's home city, was practically owned by the drug boss. The city's police had been so corrupted by Escobar that the new National Police Search Bloc under Martinez's command did not contain a single paisa, or Medellin native, for fear he would secretly be on Escobar's payroll. But that precaution had its own costs: Martinez's men knew nothing of the area, and had no local sources or informants. Even the unit's plainclothes detectives, members of Colombia's FBI, called Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), stood out because none spoke with the distinctive paisa accent. On the unit's first foray into Medellin, 80 men in 10 vehicles got lost. Not all the local police were corrupt, and some fell to Escobar's assassins during the first hunt. They were killing police in Medellin at a rate of six per day, some of them from the Search Bloc. With so many killings, and so much paralyzing fear, Martinez's men were now emotionally engaged. When the National Police considered moving the unit out of Medellin, the colonel and his men insisted on staying. They would weep and pray at funerals for their dead comrades, then go back to work, their fear warring with a powerful sense of mission. Martinez fought this internal war himself, and there were times when his fear won out. Once, the colonel rushed back home to Bogota after a bomb was discovered in the basement of his family's apartment building. Nearly all the residents of the building were high-ranking National Police officers, but their response to the bomb was not to rally around their besieged colleague. Instead, they held a meeting and voted to ask Martinez to move his family out. The colonel flew home from Medellin to help his family pack. It was during this trip that Escobar proved how vulnerable the colonel and his family were - and just how far Escobar's reach extended, even in Bogota. Martinez remembered the scene well years later. He had told only his boss at police headquarters, Gen. Octavio Vargas, that he was returning that day to Bogota. So only the general, Martinez's pilot, and anyone who saw him land knew he was there. He was stuffing boxes when a retired police officer, someone he had known since his days in the academy, arrived at his door. The colonel was surprised and alarmed. How had this man known to find him in Bogota? "I come to talk to you obligated," the retired officer said with a pained expression. Martinez asked what he meant. "If I did not agree to come talk to you, they could easily kill me or my family." Then the man offered the colonel $6 million, a bribe from Pablo Escobar to call off the hunt. More specifically, the officer explained: "Continue the work, but do not do yourself or Pablo Escobar any real damage." Escobar also wanted a list of any snitches in his own organization. Tomorrow: Col. Martinez improves the search team. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Bowden's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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