International

Murder rate plummets amid ‘gangster peace’ in Medellin

Photo: Joaquin Sarmiento / AFP

| By AFP | Hervé Bar |

Seven days without a single murder… The month of August marked a security record for Colombia’s second city Medellin, the onetime fiefdom of infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.

“In Medellin, security is measured in lives” saved, said Mayor Daniel Quintero as he welcomed the breakthrough.

Medellin has seen a vertiginous drop in homicides by 97 percent in the 30 years since Escobar’s death, transforming what used to be one of the most violent cities in the world into a popular tourist destination.

The success is attributed in large part to an unofficial but mutually beneficial understanding between narco gangs, paramilitaries and the security services.

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“Peace is good for business,” explained Medellin drug dealer “Joaquin” (not his real name) of the traffickers’ motivation for avoiding violence.

Joaquin is 37 years old — two of those spent behind bars. He wears an oversized baseball cap and sagging jeans.

A Beretta pistol peaks out from under his hoodie.

Joaquin is a “capo,” a junior boss supervising drug trafficking in the streets of “Comuna 6,” a poor neighborhood perched on a mountain slope in Medellin’s northwest.

He belongs to a gang, which he declined to name, that follows the rules imposed by an organized crime “federation” known as the “Oficina de Envigado” or the “Office of Envigado” after the name of a nearby town.

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Joaquin claimed the Oficina and its member gangs acted “in solidarity with the community.”

This included meting out “parallel justice” when the system fails them.

“Escobar? He was much too violent. Too many deaths for nothing,” Joaquin told AFP.

‘The population with us’

“Everyone lives in peace on our territory,” said the capo, keen to portray himself as a good Samaritan.

“We do not want to frighten the traders and the people. We need the population with us.”

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Thirty years after Escobar was shot dead on a Medellin rooftop while trying to evade capture, the drug trade still dominates many poor neighborhoods of the city of nearly three million people.

A stone’s throw from a football pitch where mothers watch their children play, heavy foot traffic at a small, nondescript house indicates the presence of a drug den.

A black garbage bag covers the window where money trades hands. The purchased merchandise drops down from another floor in a tin can on the end of a string.

A variety of product can be found here: marijuana, cocaine and “tucibi” or “basuco” — two cheap and particularly toxic new drugs akin to unrefined “crack.”

“Everything is organized, it’s like a business. There are those who take care of the sale, the logistics, the soldiers. The bosses pay our salaries, we do the job,” said Joaquin.

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He and his colleagues move with incredible ease and assurance through the maze of sloping alleys and small, rickety brick houses. Neighborhood teenagers skulk around, acting as security.

Joaquin and his accomplices pop into one shop after another, shaking hands with acquaintances everywhere while they casually slip a gun into a bag here, deliver a package there.

For the most part, Medellin’s dealers are able to operate in peace due to an understanding among rival gangs as well as with members of the security forces — many of them on the take.

As long as they keep the streets peaceful, the gangs say police turn a blind eye to their lucrative illegal dealings.

Joaquin calls it a “gangster peace.”

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“There is nothing better than peace,” added “Javier,” an associate who met up with Joaquin and another colleague in a squatted house.

They pack out their guns on a table between religious trinkets in a filthy, lightless living room where horse posters vie with a crude rendition of the Last Supper on the wall.

“Every group manages its territory as it wishes… The bosses talk among themselves. Everything is arranged calmly,” said Javier.

– ‘City of bandits’ –

After Escobar’s demise, the face of organized crime in Medellin changed. Long controlled by a single cartel, the drug trade is now shared between several gangs under the umbrella of the Office.

The gangs had previously collaborated with paramilitary groups and the security forces to help bring an end to Escobar’s Medellin Cartel and oust leftist guerrilla groups that had tried to fill the power void it left.

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As things settled down and every group found its place in the new reality, Medellin’s homicide rate dropped from 350 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1992 to 10.2 per 100,000 so far this year — nearly half the national average.

“The armed groups set the peace and war agenda in the city,” said Luis Fernando Quijano, director of the Corporation for Peace and Social Development, an NGO.

Colombia’s new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, has vowed to bring “total peace” to conflict- and crime-ridden Colombia, including by offering an amnesty to gangsters willing to give themselves up and abandon the trade.

“We are willing to listen. We will do what the bosses decide,” Pedro said of the plan.

But for Joaquin, “to think that everyone will give themselves up is a dream.”

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“Never forget one thing: Medellin is and will always be the city of bandits,” he insisted.

General view of the Comuna 13 neighbourhood in Medellin, Colombia, on February 13, 2022. - One word sums up the history of Medellin over the last twenty years: metamorphosis. After the dark decades of 1970-2000, Colombia's second-largest city is now a transformed, peaceful, dynamic, and attractive city. And one neighborhood, more than any other, symbolizes this renaissance: the famous "Comuna 13". (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP)

International

Three U.S. Executions Set for Same Day as Trump Pushes to Expand Death Penalty

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 U.S. states, while three others —California, Oregon and Pennsylvania— currently have moratoriums in place.

The United States is set to carry out three executions on the same day, a rare occurrence that has not happened since 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

President Donald Trump has sought to expand the use of capital punishment for what he describes as “the most heinous crimes.” In April, the Department of Justice proposed expanding execution methods to include firing squads, lethal gas and electrocution.

Tennessee is scheduled to execute Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines, 66, on Thursday. He was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of a woman, according to local media.

In Oklahoma, Carlos Cuesta-Rodríguez, 70, is scheduled to be executed for a 2003 murder.

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Meanwhile, Alabama plans to execute Jeremy Williams, 42, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl.

The United States carried out 47 executions in 2025, the highest number since 2009, when 52 executions were recorded.

Florida conducted the largest number of executions last year, with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, with five each.

Of the executions carried out in 2025, 39 were conducted by lethal injection. Three were carried out by firing squad and five through nitrogen hypoxia, a method that involves forcing nitrogen gas into a face mask, depriving the prisoner of oxygen.

The United Nations has condemned nitrogen gas as a cruel and inhumane method of capital punishment.

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International

Colombia Earthquake Death Toll Reaches 265 as Rescue Teams Race Against Time

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Colombia on Monday, the strongest to hit the country this century, has so far left 265 people dead and around 3,500 injured.

In Cali, Pereira and other cities in western Colombia, rescue teams are working around the clock as they search for survivors. The first 72 hours following the earthquake will be reached at 7:34 a.m. local time (12:34 GMT), a critical window for rescue efforts as the chances of finding survivors generally decline significantly after that point.

Among those anxiously awaiting news is Valeria Cardona, a 26-year-old student searching for two of her cousins in Cali.

“We have some suspicions about their location, but there are no signs of life,” she said. “Hope is the last thing you lose, but we are anxious about receiving news we don’t want to hear.”

A team of members from the Topos Aztecas, the renowned Mexican volunteer rescue group, has also arrived in Cali to join the search. The rescuers had been working in neighboring Venezuela, where a double earthquake on June 24 left more than 6,000 people dead.

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“We all came from Venezuela, from La Guaira. The 41 days we spent working there made us stronger because we overcame hunger, pain and sleepless nights,” said Héctor Méndez, 80, president of Topos Aztecas.

Méndez encouraged those affected by the disaster not to lose hope and emphasized the commitment required from rescue teams during an emergency.

“Do not feel like victims. This is not an office or workshop schedule. This is real life, where the best part of the human spirit emerges. These are things of nature that happen,” he said.

International

German Authorities Investigate More Than 100 New Cases Against Convicted Nurse

German authorities announced Monday that they are investigating more than 100 additional cases involving a nurse who was sentenced to life in prison in November for the murder of 10 patients.

The man, who was 44 at the time of his conviction, worked in palliative care at a hospital in Würselen, near Aachen. He was also found guilty of 27 attempted murders.

Aachen prosecutors are now examining 121 new cases, a spokesperson for the office said.

Prosecutors leading the investigation are preparing a new indictment that could be filed next year. Nearly 40 bodies have so far been exhumed as part of the investigation, which covers alleged incidents dating back to September 2022.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the city of Cologne are investigating 18 additional cases. According to a spokesperson, the oldest case dates back to 2010.

Before working at the Würselen hospital, the nurse is believed to have worked at a clinic in eastern Cologne, according to local media reports.

At the time of his November conviction, the court ruled that the severity of his crimes was particularly serious, a finding that would make it difficult for him to obtain early release after 15 years in prison.

Between December 2023 and May 2024, the nurse administered overdoses of sedatives or painkillers to terminally ill patients, most of them elderly, according to the indictment in the original case.

His alleged motive was to sedate patients who required care so that he could minimize his workload during night shifts, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, the nurse worked «without enthusiasm» and «without motivation». When faced with patients requiring extensive care, he allegedly became «irritated» and showed a lack of empathy.

The case has revived painful memories in Germany of Niels Högel, a former nurse and serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2019 for the murders of at least 85 patients.