Colombia: Drug lord claims to know who shot Escobar

Charges for massacres and disappearances are pending for Diego Murillo in Colombia

A convicted Colombian drug trafficker has written a book from his Miami prison cell claiming that his brother fired the shot that killed notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

In the book How We Killed The Boss, Diego Murillo - widely known as Don Berna - describes Escobar's final hours when police caught up with him in 1993. Murillo claims that he and his brother Rodolfo Murillo Bejarano, nicknamed Semilla, were helping police hunt for Escobar as part of a mafia-funded death squad called Los Pepes, and were there with the police when they entered Escobar's safe house, the Colombia Reports website says.

Murillo says in an excerpt of his memoir published by La Semana that when Escobar ran out on to his roof, Bejarano took aim and shot him in the head. But General Hugo Martinez Poveda, head of the search unit, has rejected the explosive claims. "It's not true what he says," Poveda tells Colombian daily El Tiempo. "I was constantly communicating by radio with police officer Hugo Aguilar and with the Lieutenant Hugo Martinez Bolivar (my son) and the operation was carried out entirely by policemen." Official reports say that three policemen shot Escobar.

Murillo, a former paramilitary leader, is still wanted in Colombia in connection with numerous disappearances and massacres. His memoir is due to be released in early August.

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