Carlos Lehder (born 11 September 1949) was a German-Colombian drug lord and a co-founder of the Medellin Cartel. Lehder was an admirer of John Lennon and Adolf Hitler, and he was known as a playboy and a marijuana smuggler in Miami. In 1979, he was contacted by Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria's friend El Leon, who introduced him to cocaine smuggling; Lehder would smuggle cocaine into the United States via Miami until his arrest.
Biography[]
Lehder in Colombia, 1979
Lehder being arrested
Carlos Lehder was born on 11 September 1949 in Armenia, Colombia, the son of a German father and Colombian mother. He loved John Lennon and Adolf Hitler, and he worked as a stolen car smuggler, marijuana dealer, and, later, a cocaine trafficker. By 1979, he was flying marijuana into the United States with a fleet of planes alongside Carlos Jung, making Lehder a rich playboy. However, his life was changed when he met "El Leon", and he began to smuggle the first cocaine into Miami that year. He was paid to smuggle 1,000 kilos into Miami on his planes, and he became very rich, buying Norman's Cay in the Bahamas with the money that he gained from his new operation. On 19 November 1981, he was nearly killed back in Colombia by kidnappers from M-19 leading to Lehder founding Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS), a counter-insurgent paramilitary group. Lehder also became a leader of "The Extraditibles", an MAS-like Medellin Cartel offshoot, and he hosted ROC 102.4 FM, a radio station that accused the United States' citizens of being the real criminals in the narcotics trade for consuming the drugs; a usually-intoxicated Lehder constantly insulted "American imperialists" in his speeches on the radio. Lehder also entered politics as the founder of the neo-Nazi National Latin Movement, which opposed extradition, supported a united South America, and won 10,000 supporters in Quindio department. As the leaders of the cartel were hunted down, however, Lehder put his far-right views aside to join forces with the left-wing Movimiento Armado Quintin Lame. In 1984, shortly after the Tranquilandia raid, he was arrested for the murder of Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara, and he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison, plus 135 years.