When criminal defense lawyers face criticism for representing the "bad guys," they respond with a familiar refrain: Defending unpopular clients amounts to defending the constitutional right to representation and the presumption of innocence. Now, some lawyers say, that right is coming under fire in the defense of narcotics traffickers. Specifically, they say, the Justice Department has failed to provide guidance on how defense attorneys can protect themselves against prosecution for taking legal fees that turn out to be tainted by dirty money -- thus deterring them from representing accused drug dealers. The criminal defense bar is closely watching the coming trial of a prominent Miami attorney, Ben Kuehne. In late 2001, Mr. Kuehne was hired by a fellow attorney to vet the source of his fees, and subsequently was himself indicted for money-laundering. [continues 678 words]
Torstar Network Jorge Acosta knew his life would change forever once he agreed to play ball with police and prosecutors by testifying at a high stakes Mississauga murder trial. Acosta, 31, who is now in the witness protection program with his family, had been given immunity despite playing key roles in three contract murders, including the killings of a father and son who drug investigators believed were linked to a Colombian drug cartel and a Mexican crime group. Using his testimony, Peel prosecutors Steve Sherriff and Mike Morris last week convinced a jury to convict three men of first-degree murder in the July 26, 2005, slaying of Mississauga's Mauricio Castro, a major Canadian cocaine dealer. [continues 1227 words]
An Appeals Court Backed The 30-Year Sentence Of A Colombian Drug Chieftain A federal appeals court in Atlanta Thursday upheld the 30-year drug trafficking sentence of Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa in Miami. At the same time, the three-judge panel that heard Ochoa's appeal warned South Florida federal judges that they must not secretly docket court cases to hide their existence from the public. Interim U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta hailed the ruling as a victory for his office. [continues 438 words]
MIAMI - One half of a team of brothers alleged to have run Colombia's notorious Cali cocaine smuggling cartel appeared Monday in a federal courtroom to face U.S. charges that were 14 years in the making. Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, 61, was ordered held without bond after waiving his right to a bond hearing. He and his older brother, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 66, will be formally arraigned March 28. Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela appeared in court dressed in a light olive- green jail jumpsuit and shackled with handcuffs to another prisoner. He listened to the proceedings through headphones that provided a Spanish translation, but he did not speak. [continues 473 words]
Case Related To 9-11 Under Seal MIAMI - An Algerian waiter who may have served Sept. 11 hijackers. Drug informants who dished out dirt on the upper echelon of a Colombian drug cartel. An interstate prostitution ring. All of these are examples of cases moving through the federal court system either completely or partially in secret. And while some secrecy has always been part of the process, defense attorneys, civil libertarians and news media say the federal courts are going too far in closing their work to the public, particularly in terrorism and drug cases. [continues 641 words]
The Supreme Court Will Consider A South Florida Immigrant's Challenge To Government Secrecy About His Detention In The War On Terrorism. An act of secrecy by a Miami judge last year, ''super-sealing'' a lawsuit by a South Florida man detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks so that no trace of his case appeared in any public record, has had the opposite of the intended effect. Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, a one-time country veterinarian who more recently waited tables in Delray Beach, is fast becoming known in civil libertarian circles. His challenge to government secrecy has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. [continues 890 words]
A secret docketing system hiding some sensitive Miami federal court cases from public view has been exposed and is being challenged in two higher courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. "We don't have secret justice in this country," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Washington-based journalists watchdog group is asking the appellate courts to open up two Miami federal cases it says were litigated in secret. The group has filed briefs in the Supreme Court and in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Representing two dozen media and legal organizations, it is mounting the stiffest challenge yet to a practice legal experts say violates free speech rights and ignores established court decisions favoring open records and courtrooms. [continues 1008 words]
US authorities have filed extradition requests for two of Colombia's most notorious drug traffickers. Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela ran the Cali cartel, which dominated the world's cocaine trade in the 1990s. The extradition order alleges they have continued to run their empire from their prison cells in Colombia, where they have been confined since 1995. President Alvaro Uribe is expected to authorise the request, which must also go through the supreme court. The Rodriguez Orejuela brothers are charged with smuggling 55 tonnes of cocaine, laundering about $2bn and silencing those who might testify against them, either through bribery or by murder. [continues 280 words]
According To A New U.S. Indictment, Brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela Continued To Rule Over The Cali Cartel From Their Colombian Prison Cells. The brothers behind the Cali Cartel are facing new U.S. charges accusing them of trafficking more than 55 tons of cocaine, laundering $2 billion in proceeds and silencing witnesses with money and murder. According to a new federal indictment unsealed Monday in Miami, Miguel Rodriguez-Orejuela and older brother Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela continued to lord over the cartel from their Colombian prison cells. [continues 763 words]
From behind bars in Colombia, two brothers who headed the notorious Cali cartel stayed in business by teaching the next generation how to export cocaine, launder billions in drug money and buy the loyalty of witnesses and their families, according to a federal grand jury in Miami. Authorities announced the indictment of 11 Colombians, including jailed Cali cartel leaders Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela. The indictment, handed up Sept. 18, was unsealed Monday. The brothers were served with arrest warrants in their Colombian prison cells, said Jesus Torres, who heads U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Miami. [continues 701 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia- Former Colombian drug kingpin Fabio Ochoa, sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. prison on a drug conviction, insisted in a letter to Colombian media that he was innocent. "I have a clear conscience," Ochoa said in the letter, portions of which were aired on Colombia's FM Radio Wednesday. "I fulfilled my promise to never again break the law when I turned myself over to Colombian justice." As one of the leaders of the deadly Medellin cartel, Ochoa helped transform cocaine smuggling into a tightly run, billion-dollar enterprise in the 1980s. He received amnesty at home after serving a five-year prison sentence in Colombia. [continues 168 words]
MIAMI - Fabio Ochoa, once a feared leader of Colombia's deadly Medellin drug cartel, was sentenced Tuesday to more than 30 years in prison for returning to the drug trade after winning amnesty at home. Ochoa, who helped transform cocaine smuggling into a tightly run, billion-dollar business in the 1980s, was sent to prison for joining a network capable of moving 30 tons monthly from 1997 to 1999. "In this world of narcotrafficking and what it did to this country, the defendant is one of four or five people who literally changed the world as we knew it," lead prosecutor Ed Ryan said. [continues 837 words]
MIAMI (AP) - Fabio Ochoa, once a feared leader of Colombia's deadly Medellin drug cartel, was sentenced Tuesday to more than 30 years in prison for returning to the drug trade after winning amnesty at home. Ochoa, who helped transform cocaine smuggling into a tightly run, billion-dollar business in the 1980s, was sent to prison for joining a network capable of moving 30 tons monthly from 1997 to 1999. Ochoa, 46, was convicted of conspiracy in May of joining a smuggling network run by one of his former cartel underlings after serving a five-year Colombian prison sentence and getting amnesty for his cartel days. [end]
MIAMI -- A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced the highest-ranking Colombian drug lord ever to face U.S. justice to more than 30 years in prison. Fabio Ochoa Vasquez , who helped transform cocaine smuggling into a tightly run, billion-dollar business in the 1980s, was sent to federal prison for joining a network capable of moving 30 tons a month from 1997 to 1999. The charges had carried a possible life sentence, but prosecutors recommended 30 years even though the defense insisted a sentence longer than 12 years would violate conditions of Ochoa's 1999 extradition. The final sentence was 30 years and five months. [continues 406 words]
Miami: Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa, a former leader of the notorious Medellin cocaine cartel, was sentenced Tuesday to more than 30 years in prison for plotting to ship tons of cocaine to the United States. U.S. prosecutors in Florida had indicted Ochoa and 42 others in 1999 on charges of conspiring to ship up to 30 tons of cocaine a month into the United States from 1997 to 1999. He was extradited to the United States in 2001. [end]
MIAMI - Jurors began deliberating the fate Tuesday of former Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa, after a three-week trial dominated by the testimony of his former friends and alleged co-conspirators. "Let today be the day of Fabio Ochoa's reckoning," federal prosecutor Ed Ryan concluded in the government's closing arguments. Ryan portrayed the defendant as a wily fiend who had duped the justice system - "and the whole world" - during a drug career spanning more than two decades and involving 56 tons of cocaine. [continues 575 words]
MIAMI -- A leader of a 1980s Colombian drug cartel was convicted Wednesday of rejoining a smuggling network after he was released from prison in his homeland and given amnesty. Fabio Ochoa, a leader of the defunct Medellin cartel, is the most prominent Colombian drug suspect to face trial in the United States since the two countries resumed extraditions in 1997. He faces a possible life prison sentence on two federal drug conspiracy charges alleging he joined and advised a 30-ton-a-month smuggling network that united Colombian suppliers and Mexican distributors from 1997 to 1999. [continues 463 words]
MIAMI, Fla. -- One of the biggest Colombian druglords ever brought to the United States to face justice goes on trial today under security so tight that the anonymous jurors will be driven back and forth to court in vans with tinted windows to protect their identities. Fabio Ochoa Sanchez is accused of getting back into the cocaine business in the late 1990s, after serving time for his role as one of the bosses of the now-defunct Medellin cartel, one of the most powerful drug networks of the 1980s. [continues 248 words]
The Ochoa clan went from breeding horses to trafficking drugs and back again. Now the family has gone into another business: defending one of its own. MEDELLIN, Colombia - Proud locals call this the "city of eternal spring" for the cool, damp mist that blankets the mountains, verdant with eucalyptus and pine. It's hard to fathom that with 3,500 killings last year, Medellin ranks among the hemisphere's most violent cities. From afar, the skyline of downtown glass towers could be any big city, interspersed with smart condominiums and familiar fast-food restaurants. Closer in, the scars of Colombia's drug-fueled conflict are evident: The infamous comunas, barrios rife with guns and drugs, gangs with hit men for hire, police armed to the hilt, bombed-out buildings. [continues 4069 words]
BARUCH VEGA, 56 aka, Dr. B Fashion photographer and undercover law enforcement asset in America's war on drugs. Colombian born, moved to United States in mid 1970s. Clients include international models, Colombian drug traffickers and various branches of U.S. law enforcement. Status: Photographing models, working with new traffickers looking to turn themselves in, living in Florida. ALEJANDRO BERNAL, 43, aka Juvenal (Young One), Tony, The key target of Operation Millennium, said to have brought smuggling into the computer age and exported 20 to 30 tons of cocaine a month. Former kitchen cabinet salesman, partnered with Mexico's top drug boss, Amado Carillo Fuentes (aka, Lord of the Skies). Admits he made some $10-million by trafficking cocaine. Supplied guns to Colombia's illegal paramilitary forces. Childhood friend of Fabio Ochoa. Status: Pleaded guilty April 17, 2003, to conspiring to smuggle 20 tons of cocaine; can substantially reduce minimum 20-year term by cooperating; expected to testify against Fabio Ochoa. [continues 462 words]
