Upon arrival in Bogota, immigration officials ran Ochoa’s fingerprints into their database, the country’s immigration agency said.
Confirming that Colombian authorities were not looking for him, it said Ochoa had been released “to be reunited with his family”.
Among the sea of reporters at the airport terminal, Ochoa was met by relatives and hugged his daughter.
In 2001, Ochoa was extradited to the United States after being arrested in Colombia in 1999, along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.
He had already served a prison term in Colombia in the early 90s for his role as one of the bosses of the Medellin cartel. Along with his brothers, he was the first major trafficker to surrender under a program that protected cartel members from extradition to the United States if they pleaded guilty to minor offenses in Colombia.
Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again during the so-called Millennium operation for his involvement in the cocaine smuggling business in the United States in the late 1990s.
In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced by a US court to more than 30 years in prison for his involvement in a cartel that brought an average of 30 tons of cocaine into the US every month between 1997 and 1999.
