Ochoa denied trafficking drugs after his release from Colombian jail

Ochoa, formerly of the notorious Medellin drug cartel, was convicted in May of rejoining a drugs network after he was freed from a Colombian prison and given an amnesty.

The court in Miami, Florida, had found that Ochoa had shipped an average of 30 tonnes of cocaine per month to the US in the late 1990s.

Ochoa had already served a sentence in Colombia for drugs charges related to his connection with the Medellin cartel and had said that he was no longer involved in the drugs trade.

He is one of the most prominent Colombian drug suspects to stand trial in the US since the two countries resumed extraditions in the late 1990s.

Feared network

Ochoa was flown to the US in 2001 after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 along with about 30 other alleged traffickers as part of Operation Millennium, which broke up a major cocaine trafficking ring.

He had been held in solitary confinement since his extradition and his family were denied visas to visit him in prison, the Associated Press news agency reported.

During the 1980s, he was one of the top operators in Pablo Escobar's infamous Medellin ring - supplier in its heyday of 80% of the US cocaine market.

But after his release from prison, Ochoa waged a campaign to deny he had resumed illegal drug trafficking, placing billboards declaring his innocence across Colombia.

The defunct Medellin cartel, along with the Cali cartel, was one of the most powerful and feared drug networks of the 1980s.