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TIME: Almanac 1995
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TIME Almanac 1995.iso
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080392
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08039910.000
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1994-03-25
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<text id=92TT1718>
<title>
Aug. 03, 1992: Disappearing Act
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
Aug. 03, 1992 AIDS: Losing the Battle
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
THE WEEK, Page 24
WORLD
Disappearing Act
</hdr><body>
<p>Threatened with less spacious digs, drug lord Escobar heads
for the hills
</p>
<p> Without doubt, he was the most pampered prisoner in all
Colombia. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin
cocaine cartel who surrendered 13 months ago in exchange for a
promise of no extradition to the U.S., was locked up in a suite
in a luxurious prison of his own design in his hometown of
Envigado. By most accounts, Escobar continued to run his
billion-dollar business from behind the walls. So when
Colombia's director of prisons and a deputy minister of justice
entered the jail last week to tell Escobar he was being
transferred to a harsher military prison, the drug boss would
have none of it; his lieutenants produced hidden weapons and
took both men hostage.
</p>
<p> After a night of inconclusive negotiations, 400 army
commandos stormed the jail at dawn and freed the hostages
unharmed, but Escobar was gone. He and his brother Roberto and
nine of their henchmen were nowhere to be found. They had
somehow absconded, apparently with help from prison guards and
military officers whom they had paid off. As troops combed the
surrounding mountains, an embarrassed President Cesar Gaviria
Trujillo, who has come under criticism for dealing leniently
with drug traffickers, could only remark, lamely, "I wish I had
an explanation for everything that has happened."
</p>
</body></article>
</text>