{"id":28479,"date":"2024-10-26T09:02:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-26T13:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=28479"},"modified":"2024-10-26T09:02:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-26T13:02:56","slug":"mafia-cocaine-trafficker-arrested-after-posing-by-escobars-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/10\/26\/mafia-cocaine-trafficker-arrested-after-posing-by-escobars-grave\/","title":{"rendered":"Mafia cocaine trafficker arrested after posing by Escobar’s grave"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An Italian mafia fugitive – who served as an intermediary with Colombian drug gangs – has been arrested after almost four years on the run in South America.<\/b><\/p>\n

Luigi Belvedere, one of Italy’s most wanted men, was tracked down to the city of Medell\u00edn, where infamous drug lord\u00a0Pablo Escobar<\/a>‘s cartel was based.<\/p>\n

Italian police released an image of Belvedere posing beside Escobar’s tomb when they announced his arrest.<\/p>\n

Despite fleeing Europe to evade trafficking charges, he continued to be “active in the organisation of drug shipments from South America to Europe”, police said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Belvedere, believed to be around 32 years old, was on the Italian government’s list of most dangerous fugitives.<\/p>\n

Originally from Caserta, north of Naples, he “specialised in the illegal importation of cocaine” and served as a key point of contact between mafia clans and the Colombian cocaine producers, Italian police\u00a0said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n

In Italy he worked with the Casalesi, who are part of the notorious Camorra mafia-type organisation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"Pablo<\/a>
Pablo Escobar in 1991 (Image: Britannica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Belvedere had been on the run since December 2020, when he was sentenced to almost 19 years for international drug trafficking.<\/p>\n

Europol, the EU’s policing body, worked alongside Colombian investigators to track Belvedere down in Medell\u00edn.<\/p>\n

The city has a long history with cocaine gangs, serving as the base for the Medell\u00edn cartel, Pablo Escobar’s infamous drug operation.<\/p>\n

Established in the 1970s, it supplied an estimated 80% of the global cocaine market at its peak.<\/p>\n

Escobar’s operation was so sophisticated he found himself on the Forbes list of global billionaires for seven years, before being shot dead by police in 1993.<\/p>\n

Italian police\u00a0released a photo<\/a>\u00a0of Belvedere squatting beside Escobar’s tomb.<\/p>\n

The image invokes a photo of Escobar himself, who famously posed in front of the White House in Washington DC while still overseeing the Medell\u00edn cartel.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Italian mafia fugitive – who served as an intermediary with Colombian drug gangs – has been arrested after almost four years on the run in South America. Luigi Belvedere, one of Italy’s most wanted […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1,6],"tags":[10754,10753,10752,1107,2800,2885,5967,3226,1468,2632,10751],"class_list":{"0":"post-28479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"category-world","10":"tag-camorra-mafia","11":"tag-casalesi","12":"tag-caserta","13":"tag-cocaine","14":"tag-colombia","15":"tag-drug-trafficking","16":"tag-drugs-trade","17":"tag-europol","18":"tag-italy","19":"tag-mafia","20":"tag-medellin","21":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28484,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28479\/revisions\/28484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}