‘Snitch’ Escobar More a Clam : Colombia: Cooperating with authorities was a condition of his surrender. Now the jailed drug lord appears to be reneging.

He confessed to having trafficked in cocaine, but Pablo Escobar, the jailed Medellin cartel leader, says the role of informer makes him so uncomfortable that he is taking steps to avoid it.

Escobar surrendered to authorities in June under a government program guaranteeing reduced sentences for drug suspects who turn themselves in, confess to at least one crime and cooperate with the authorities in other investigations. But the Medellin cartel leader evidently views such cooperation as a betrayal of old friends.

“The role of informer bothers me,” Escobar wrote in answer to one of a series of questions submitted to him in jail by The Times and three other news organizations.

Bogota’s weekly newsmagazine Semana recently reported that Escobar, accused of sending tons of cocaine to the United States and ordering at least four murders in Colombia, is planning to testify against suspects involved in only one drug deal in 1987.

First on the list of those to be implicated, Semana reported, is Escobar’s first cousin, Gustavo de Jesus Gaviria, killed last year in a confrontation with police. Now it appears that Escobar is also willing to point the finger at some living suspects--but only with their prior understanding.

Answering a question about his testimony against fellow traffickers, he wrote only that he has “made agreements with other suspects.” At least some of Escobar’s underlings are evidently prepared to do time to ensure that their boss receives a lighter sentence.

The administration of President Cesar Gaviria has touted suspects’ cooperation as a main advantage of the leniency program, which has been criticized for making too many concessions to traffickers. Government officials maintain that by encouraging cocaine barons to implicate each other, the policy will lead to the dismantling of the Medellin cartel and other drug-trafficking organizations.

Escobar’s rejection of the role of informer is just one more example of his attempts to manipulate the government’s plan to punish him and other traffickers.

“I confessed to the crime of drug trafficking because the government’s decrees so require it,” Escobar said in reply to the journalists’ questions. “. . . I know that I received sentence reductions for my voluntary surrender, and I am going to study ways to obtain more reductions.”

Legal experts say that Escobar might spend only a few years in jail since the government’s leniency program halves Colombia’s maximum sentence of 30 years. Further reductions are granted for good behavior and working while in prison.

Escobar’s time behind bars, however long, is guaranteed to be a period of relative comfort in a ranch house that the government converted into a prison at the cartel leader’s request.

Government officials repeatedly proclaimed that Escobar would receive no special treatment. Yet Justice Minister Jaime Giraldo and several other senior judicial officials were forced to resign this month after it was disclosed that Escobar received 208 visitors during his first month of captivity.

More than a dozen wanted criminals, including one with 13 outstanding arrest warrants, were among those who visited Escobar in jail with the knowledge of justice and prison authorities. The jail is located in Escobar’s hometown of Envigado, near the provincial capital of Medellin, from which the cartel draws its name.

“We will not allow this situation to repeat itself,” an obviously embarrassed Gaviria told Bogota’s El Espectador newspaper shortly before the resignation of his justice minister.

Giraldo, the architect of the leniency program, had also granted Escobar other privileges, including an exemption from having prisoner identification photographs taken.

Before he resigned, Giraldo also attempted to remove several terrorism cases from the jurisdiction of special “faceless” judges assigned to try Escobar and other drug suspects.

The government is attempting to keep the identities of the judges secret to protect them from traffickers’ bribes, threats and violence. Giraldo’s initiative would have placed several sensitive cases in the hands of ordinary judges more vulnerable to pressure by the drug lords.

In his written answers to questions, Escobar called Colombia’s current justice system “a bit undemocratic” but added that he doesn’t mind if a judge’s identity is cloaked.

“The important thing is that this invisible judge also be a fair judge,” Escobar wrote.

The cartel leader equivocated in his answers to several questions, including those asking how many people he employed--”many”--how the Medellin cartel is faring compared to rival organizations--”I don’t know”--and how much time he should spend in prison to pay for his crimes--”depends on the accusations, the evidence and the judge or jury”.

But Escobar emphatically accused the country’s top police officials of murder and human rights abuses, naming Gen. Miguel Gomez Padilla, the national chief of police; Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez, head of the intelligence police, and Col. Oscar Pelaez Carmona, a former head of the judicial police.

The cartel leader accused the three officials of ordering the 1989 killing of a leading presidential candidate, Sen. Luis Carlos Galan. Escobar is named as the mastermind of that assassination in a formal charge on file against him, and there is no evidence to suggest that police were involved.

Escobar also provided glimpses of his past life on the run and of his hopes for the future.

“At times I was in the jungle,” he wrote. “Other times I hid in the big buildings of the city, in beautiful houses, in slums or miserable shacks, and many times I had to sleep in the jungle without any roof except the leaves of the trees.”

Escobar said he would like to study journalism and write a column for an influential newspaper or magazine when he leaves jail.