‘Drugs baron' makes first US court appearance

A former leader of Colombia’s defunct Medellin cartel is in a ‘‘living hell’’ of solitary confinement after being extradited to the United States to face cocaine trafficking charges, his lawyer said yesterday.

Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, the highest-profile Colombian extradited to face US justice since 1987, pleaded innocent at his first US court appearance to charges that he helped smuggle 30 tons of cocaine a month and spirited away the profits.

‘‘It is very difficult for Fabio to be where he is,’’ defence lawyer Jose Quinon said, describing 23 hours a day locked away and relatives lacking visas to visit him. ‘‘For him it is a living hell to be here to await trial.’’

Ochoa, 45, who was extradited to Miami over the weekend, agreed to be held without bond on the condition that the question could be raised again later.

Ochoa could face a life sentence if convicted of three conspiracy counts charging he helped smuggle tons of cocaine after 1997.

He has immunity on crimes committed before the United States and Colombia signed a new extradition treaty that year.

Ochoa has acknowledged drug trafficking ‘‘in the distant past’’, Quinon said. But he said Ochoa ‘‘categorically denies’’ any subsequent crimes covered by the extradition treaty.

Security was tight for the 10-minute hearing. Ochoa was escorted through an entrance normally reserved for the judge while at least 15 marshals stood guard.

He listened to a Spanish translation through headphones.

Ochoa is being held in a modern, high-rise jail linked to the courthouse by tunnel. Inmates are hobbled with leg chains their entire time outside the jail, and handcuffs are removed in court only to move from a jury box to a podium and back again.

Three men extradited by Colombia under the same 43-defendant indictment also appeared in court with Ochoa. Bond hearings for Jairo Sanchez Christancho, who also pleaded innocent, Jario de Jesus Mesa Sanin and Luis Fernando Rebellon Arcila will be held over the next two weeks.

The Fort Lauderdale indictment issued in 1999 has been expanded four times to cover a two-year conspiracy to move cocaine from Colombia through the Bahamas and Mexico to the United States.

The charges reflect anti-drug statutes that make anyone convicted subject to a life sentence. By treaty, no extradited Colombians can face the US death penalty.

Ochoa and his two older brothers were at the top of the Medellin cartel with the late Pablo Escobar when organizers took a fragmented business and applied a corporate approach to cocaine smuggling in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1991, Ochoa was the first major trafficker to surrender to the Colombian Government in return for a promise that he would not be extradited.

But US prosecutors say Ochoa got back into the cocaine trade after going free in 1996. He was arrested in 1999 along with dozens of other suspected traffickers in a joint DEA-Colombian police operation.