 | Velasquez was paroled in 2014 after spending 22 years in jail for plotting the assassination of a former Colombian presidential candidate. The slaying of the cartel-fighting Luis Carlos Galan during the 1990 presidential campaign he was heavily favoured to win marked the apex of drug violence in Colombia two decades ago. The cartel waged a bombing campaign across Bogota, Medellin and Cali, with many of the explosive devices planted by Velasquez.
Escobar even downed an Avianca commercial jetliner in 1989, killing all 107 on board, because he believed Galan's political heir, then President Cesar Gaviria, was aboard.
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