Colombians Closing In on Escobar

His private army shattered and his family threatened, fugitive cocaine king Pablo Escobar is coming under unprecedented pressure to surrender to authorities and put an end to the deadly war he is waging against the Colombian government.

A month after a car bomb blamed on Escobar killed 20 people in downtown Bogota, nearly all of the drug lord’s most trusted henchmen have been slain or captured or have surrendered. And a new, shadowy gang of vigilantes has vowed to kill Escobar and anyone connected to him.

So far, the vigilantes have slain dozens of Escobar associates and dynamited ranches and apartment buildings belonging to his relatives. Officials say that Escobar is increasingly aware that the only way he can save his life is to turn himself in--if he can survive doing that.

Government forces, searching relentlessly through the Medellin-area forests and jungles where Latin America’s most wanted fugitive is believed to be hiding, say they are closer than ever to capturing--or killing--the man who seven months ago walked out of a posh “prison” to the embarrassment of President Cesar Gaviria.

Gaviria had negotiated Escobar’s surrender the year before, but the drug baron continued to supervise cocaine trafficking and order the execution of his enemies from inside the Jacuzzi-equipped prison.

Gaviria hopes to stop Escobar in an effort to salvage his government’s reputation and slow a wave of violence that is threatening to careen out of control. More than 100 police officers have been killed since Escobar fled prison, most of the deaths blamed on the drug boss.

“We are getting closer and closer,” a senior official in Gaviria’s government said. “(Escobar’s) organization is weaker and weaker every day. But you can never predict what he is going to do. He’s like a wounded tiger--he can react very badly.”

Even as officials spoke of Escobar’s demise, a car bomb--the sixth in as many weeks--rocked downtown Bogota on Friday evening, injuring 27 people and leveling six small buildings. At least 43 people have been killed and hundreds injured by car bombs in the last two months.

Escobar is believed to be trying to negotiate safe passage for his wife and children before trying to surrender. The two children, holding passports with valid U.S. tourist visas, tried to board a plane bound for Miami two weeks ago but were stopped by Colombian officials. (The U.S. Embassy then hastily revoked the visas and sought to explain why Escobar’s family had been given visas in the first place.)

Despite his enormous wealth and power, Escobar finds himself vulnerable and increasingly isolated, experts and officials say, because he is being assailed on all fronts: military, legal, financial.

The government has offered huge rewards to anyone supplying information about Escobar and the Medellin drug cartel that he heads. Armed with 29 state-of-emergency decrees, Gaviria is promising leniency to Colombians with legal problems who snitch on Escobar or his associates.

Escobar alone has an $11-million price on his head. His picture is flashed on nightly television spots offering the reward. “This could be the chance of a lifetime,” the announcer says. “Don’t miss it.”

Mounting a legal offensive, prosecutors have issued 16 indictments against Escobar. He is formally accused of assassinating three presidential candidates, a well-respected justice minister and a crusading newspaper editor; he is also wanted for the 1989 bombing of a Colombian jetliner that killed all 107 people aboard.

The cases are being handled by Colombia’s new and highly regarded attorney general, Gustavo de Greiff; previously, prosecutions were handled directly by judges, often susceptible to intimidation or bribes. The few cases brought against the drug king languished for years.

Probably the most significant threat to Escobar has come from actions of the vigilantes, a clandestine paramilitary band believed to be made up of former Escobar allies and bounty hunters.

Calling themselves the People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, or the “Pepes” for short, they use many of the same terrorist tactics that Escobar perfected. Also, they clearly have inside information on the fugitive’s movements and possible whereabouts, according to officials familiar with the hunt for Medellin chieftain.

These officials say the vigilantes appear to be led by members of the Moncada and Galeano clans that were once part of the Medellin cartel but fought with Escobar over millions of dollars in illicit drug earnings while he was in prison last year.

As a result, Escobar at that time reportedly ordered a purge in which dozens of traffickers and their accountants were murdered. The surviving Moncada and Galeano families vowed revenge.

By some estimates, they have killed up to 50 Escobar associates--including the head of Escobar’s security, in-law Hernan Dario Henao--and sent others rushing in panic to surrender.

The Pepes make a point of publicizing their actions, leaving signed placards on the bodies of their victims or issuing statements claiming responsibility.

“We will work for the total annihilation of Pablo Escobar, his underlings, collaborators and property,” the group said in one statement.

The group is also targeting Escobar’s family. Last month, it dynamited his mother’s ranch near Medellin, set off two car bombs at apartment buildings owned by other relatives and set fire to his prized antique car collection stored at one of his homes.

When Escobar’s children were stopped at the airport last month, son Juan Pablo, 16, said they were fleeing the Pepes.

“(Escobar) never had the experience of having his enemies get so close to his family,” a Bogota law enforcement official said. “It has given him a taste of his own medicine.”

Privately, some in Colombia applaud the vigilantes--a sign of the desperate frustration with which people view the violence that grips the nation and the apparent inability of the government to halt it.

But analysts point to the long-term dangers of yet another armed, organized group that, once Escobar is out of the picture, will almost certainly seek other targets.

Several law enforcement officials said the Pepes could emerge as heirs to the Medellin cartel.

“As long as the state . . . does not produce more convincing results in its war against terrorism, subversion and crime, and while bombs continue exploding and innocent people falling, groups like the Pepes will continue to exist,” influential newspaper columnist Enrique Santos Calderon wrote last week.

“And, the way things are going, (these groups) will continue to gain popularity. . . . But if it’s the Pepes who put the last nail in Escobar’s coffin, then it will be more of a victory for criminality than for the state.”

For the Gaviria administration, recapturing Escobar is an important step in repairing enormous damage done to its credibility when Escobar demanded, and received, generous concessions for his original surrender. Gaviria agreed not to extradite Escobar or any of his associates to the United States, where charges are pending against them, and he allowed the drug boss to dictate terms of his confinement in a prison-turned-hacienda in his hometown of Envigado.

Escobar’s easy escape from the prison, even as Gaviria insisted that Escobar was in a maximum-security lockup, was a harsh blow to the government.

While an end to Escobar’s reign might reduce the level of violence in this violent country, it would have no impact on the level of cocaine trafficking, experts say.

Most of the cocaine that enters the United States comes from Colombia, but the portion shared by Escobar and the Medellin cartel declined dramatically in 1989 and 1990, when Escobar was on the run from police. A rival cartel in the city of Cali now controls two-thirds of the cocaine shipped to the United States and an even higher percentage of the expanding European market, according to estimates by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Some see the Cali traffickers as an even more insidious threat to Colombia because of their ability to penetrate Colombian society and government with a finesse Escobar never developed.

Escobar has on several occasions offered to surrender in exchange for a long list of government concessions. So far, he’s had no takers. Recently, he repeated the offer, this time in a faxed letter to the New York Times in which he asked the United States to take care of his family in exchange for his surrender.

Washington rejected the offer, saying Escobar was an internal Colombian matter. The next day, De Greiff, the attorney general, said the Escobar children were entitled to the same protection as any Colombian in danger.

Times special correspondent Stan Yarbro contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

Pablo Escobar, 43, started out as a teen-age entrepreneur stealing tombstones from a cemetery, sanding off the inscriptions and reselling them. But it was more than ingenuity that fostered his rise from small-time hood to cocaine king. Along the way, he nurtured a Robin Hood image, winning thousands of poverty-stricken admirers by providing jobs and housing in his home base of Medellin. Today, however, Escobar finds himself unpopular and increasingly isolated.