Man Said to Be Drug Cartel’s Top Assassin Is Arrested In N.Y.
The man believed to be the top assassin for Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel has been arrested and is being held without bail for likely extradition, federal officials said Thursday.
Paul Daniel Munoz Mosquera was the mastermind behind the Aug. 18, 1989, assassination of Colombian Sen. Luis Carlos Galan, the leading presidential candidate, said Robert A. Bryden, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in New York.
“The Colombian national police credit him with the murder of at least 40 Colombia national police officers, judges, public officials and innocent bystanders in this wave of terror that the country of Colombia has been subjected to,” Bryden said.
Munoz was arrested Wednesday night as he talked on a pay telephone in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, the agent said.
He had been in this country about 1 1/2 weeks and arrived in New York on Saturday from Los Angeles, authorities said.
“This assassin was in the United States to commit a murder on United States soil,” Bryden said. “We do not know who the intended target was at this time.”
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