Ochoa denies trafficking drugs after his release from jail

The trial of one of the most powerful Colombian drug lords ever brought to the United States has begun in Miami amid tight security.

Fabio Ochoa Vasquez is accused of getting re-involved in the cocaine smuggling business in the late 1990s.

He had already served a jail sentence for his role as one of bosses of the now defunct Medellin cartel, which was one of the most feared drug networks during the 1980s.

Mr Ochoa is the most prominent drug defendant to be sent from Colombia to the US since the extradition process was resumed in 1997, after it was interrupted by a campaign of bombings and assassinations by the drug cartels.

Poster campaign

Monday's trial began with the selection of the 13 jurors.

They are being driven back and forth to court in vans with tinted windows to protect their anonymity - their identities will even be kept from prosecutors and defence lawyers.

Mr Ochoa has been in a Miami jail since his extradition from Colombia in September 2001.

Prosecutors allege that, after serving a jail sentence in Colombia, he got back into the drugs trade and smuggled up to 30 tons of cocaine into the US each month from December 1997 to November 1999.

Mr Ochoa denies the charges. At the time of his arrest in 1999 he erected billboards in Medellin and Bogota declaring: "Yesterday I made a mistake. Today I am innocent."

If convicted, Mr Ochoa could face life in prison.

Surrender

US agents are said to have been pursuing Fabio Ochoa and his brothers, Jorge Luis and Juan David, since the late 1970s.

The Ochoas ran the notorious Medellin cartel along with the late Pablo Escobar among others.

Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, the cartel revolutionised the illicit drugs trade and terrorised Colombia.

In 1990, Mr Ochoa became the first major trafficker to surrender under a controversial programme which protected cartel members from extradition to the US if they pleaded guilty to minor offences in Colombia.

Mr Ochoa was released from prison in 1996 and then arrested during the so-called Millennium operation which targeted more than 40 alleged traffickers.