Drug Kingpin Plans to Flee, Police Say

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian police have alerted staff members at airports that cocaine king Pablo Escobar Gavira is trying to leave the country, a police chief said Saturday.

“We have information that Pablo Escobar is trying to leave the country,” Inspector General Octavio Vargas, Colombia’s third-ranking police officer, said in a radio interview.

“He is trying to obtain a passport and a visa with a false name. We have alerted the different airports and we are coordinating with Interpol to stop him deceiving the authorities.”

Escobar, reputed head of the Medellin cocaine cartel and the trafficker most wanted in the United States, has managed to defeat Colombian police in their effort to track him down.

He has been able to send communiques to the press and has denied previous police charges that he was trying to leave Colombia. He says he has many friends in the Medellin area, capital of the cocaine trade.

Colombian newspapers reported Saturday that security police had captured a close associate of Escobar, known as El Zarco. A police spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

El Tiempo newspaper said the man, whose real name was not given, was arrested in Bogota Wednesday night. It said he was suspected of involvement in the assassination of leftist Patriotic Union presidential candidate Bernardo Jaramillo last month.