Too big to jail: the Colombian drug lord who snitched his way to freedom

By Jacob Kushner and Daniel Ammann

If you were walking the streets of Las Águilas, an upmarket neighbourhood of Mexico City, in the early hours of February 28th 1995, you might have noticed a collection of casually dressed people up on the rooftops. Perhaps you’d have mistaken them for stargazers or late-night revellers. In fact they were a crack team of snipers, settling into place for an extraordinary operation.

Before dawn more than 70 heavily armed police officers and presidential guardsmen stormed the house at 62 Costa Street. Even for Mexico, where drug cartels protect their businesses with swaggering militias, it was an unusual show of force. The target was Raúl Salinas de Gortari, a wealthy businessman and elder brother of Mexico’s former president. Salinas’s alleged crime? Assassinating his one time brother-in-law, a political rival.