Colombia Drugs Lord Shot Dead In Madrid Hospital

Spanish newspaper El Mundo said the assassin asked another patient who was sharing the Colombian`s room if he was Vargas.

One of Colombia's most notorious drug lords, Leonidas Vargas, was shot dead in his Madrid hospital bed on Thursday, Spanish police said.

At least one person entered the room in Madrid's October 12th Hospital where Vargas was being treated for a serious illness, and shot the drugs kingpin four times just before 8 p.m. local time, police said.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo said the assassin asked another patient who was sharing the Colombian's room if he was Vargas.

When the man said no, he took out a gun fitted with a silencer and shot Vargas, who was asleep. The hospital was still locked down at 10 p.m. as police searched for his killer, El Mundo said.

Neither police nor newspaper websites said whether Vargas had been under police guard.

In the 1980s Vargas, allegedly a former partner of the late Medellin cartel drug chieftain Pablo Escobar, ran his own cocaine manufacturing and smuggling operation out of a remote, jungle-covered area of Colombia's southwestern Caqueta province.

A Colombian court sentenced him in 1995 to 26 years in prison for illicit enrichment related to drugs, but he was freed in 2002.

Spanish authorities picked him up for carrying a fake Venezuelan passport in 2006 and he was awaiting trial in connection to a 500-kg (1,100-lb) cocaine haul.

His trial had been delayed and prison authorities freed him after he came down with what Spanish media said was a lung-related illness.