From off the Irish coast, to a jail in Dubai, US courtrooms, ports in Australia and Brazil, and cities in Serbia, this is the story of how some of the most ruthless criminals slither around South Africa, living among us while commanding gangs responsible for bloody warfare across the globe.

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February 2016: Two men walk up to each other in the pulsating hustle of a Johannesburg street. Pedestrians pace, cars honk, engines rev. Melting into this mayhem, the men greet in English, then switch over to Spanish, initially chit-chatting about health issues including backache. 

They move on to discussing cars, work, the beach, and the weather, specifically noting how the sun’s effect is just like in Cuba. The two exchange words about whether to eat breakfast, or lunch, or to simply sip on some coffee instead.

They switch to more pressing topics – they refer to someone named Jabon who is “the biggest warrior of them all”. The duo discusses how “that old lady” Griselda was murdered in the Colombian city of Medellín, how someone named Amado “stole twelve” from someone named Pablo, and someone who “in different times” was “in prison at the cathedral”. They also talk about how to shoot properly – “it” needed to be pressed against the throat. 

Decoding the duo’s conversation, it appears Jabon was the nickname of Wilber Alirio Varela-Fajardo, a high-ranking member of Colombia’s North Valley Cartel, that pushed multiple tons of cocaine into Europe and the United States. Jabon was known as the boss of a squad of hitmen and was murdered in Venezuela in 2008. Griselda could be a reference to the infamous Griselda Blanco, a cocaine trafficker who ranked in the top tier of Colombia’s Medellín Cartel. She was murdered in 2012 – two bullets snuffed out her life. “Amado stealing twelve from Pablo” seemed to refer to Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes who may have stolen twelve tons of cocaine from none other than globally notorious fellow trafficker Pablo Escobar, of Colombia. Both Fuentes and Escobar died in the 1990s. Fuentes’s life ended rather strangely after he had plastic surgery to alter his appearance – perhaps a permanent disguise to throw off cops who were on his trail. Escobar was shot. Meanwhile, the mention of someone jailed in “the cathedral” was more than likely a reference to its Spanish translation, La Catedral – the name of a prison overlooking Medellín built according to specifications provided by Escobar who was once detained there. 

So, who exactly were the two men seeming to casually discuss some of the world’s most infamous – and assassinated – narco-traffickers on a first-name basis in South Africa’s City of Gold? One was an informant secretly working with the United States government. The other was a man from Cuba and one of the world’s most unabashed drug dealers, Nelson Pablo Yester-Garrido. DM/ ML

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