AZMEX SPECIAL 24 JUL 2018
Note: from the Sun UK. Video, numerous photos, etc.
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AGENT OF DEATH SAS: Who Dares Wins star Jason Fox reveals Pablo Escobar's hitman put a gun against his head — to show how he killed 257 people. The former Royal Marines commando sat down for a nerve-racking conversation with John Jairo Velasquez where the cold-blooded killer showed his two-bullets-to-the-brain execution method
EXCLUSIVE
By Rod McPhee, Senior Bizarre Reporter
24th July 2018, 9:00 pmUpdated: 24th July 2018, 9:07 pm
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/6856373/jason-fox-meets-pablo-escobar-hitman/
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LAZING in bed with his girlfriend, the hitman for drug lord Pablo Escobar answered the phone – and heard a recording of her betraying his boss to cops. The Colombian crime lord then came on the line, ordering John Jairo Velasquez to kill the love of his life as she lay by his side.
Jason Fox with cartel hitman John Jairo Velasquez who has killed 257 people CHANNEL 4
And in a moment which has gone down in legend, he murdered Wendy Chavarriaga Gil without flinching.
Four decades later, the same cold-blooded killer pressed a gun to the head of former Royal Marines commando Jason Fox as he filmed Meet the Drug Lords: Inside The Real Narcos, a documentary about the origins and legacy of the drugs trade.
Jason — known as Foxy — was shown the two-bullets-to-the-brain method that Velasquez had used to assassinate 257 people.
Even more nerve-racking, Foxy — who used to kill drug smugglers while serving with British special forces — then became embroiled in a tense conversation with Velasquez, who said: "I'd like to ask you a question please. How many people did you kill in your wars? That's war.
John Jairo Valasquez with his boss drug lord Pablo Escobar who he killed for
"We're both killers, but you are a legal killer, a killer for the constitution. I'm an illegal killer. We do it for the love of the criminal organisation.
"I would have liked to have been a man like you, with honour. But I grew up in a very violent society. A kid surrounded by violence will grow up violent too."
Foxy's new three-part Channel 4 series shows how the troubled societies of Middle and South America were a perfect breeding ground for the multi billion-pound narcotics trade.
Travelling to Mexico, Peru and Colombia, Foxy, 42, looked at how the drugs trade is still booming in the region — and bringing untold bloodshed at the hands of callous men such as Velasquez, who is nicknamed Popeye.
Armed cops guarding 105 tonnes of marijuana seized from Mexican drug cartels
During their knife-edge discussion, Foxy tried to explain that as a former member of the Special Boat Service who served in Afghanistan, he had only killed for his country.
But he had to tread a fine line with Jekyll-and-Hyde killer Velasquez, who claimed he was reformed man but has since been re-arrested on extortion charges. Foxy said later: "We had this conversation and there was a rapport because there had to be — I didn't want to p**s him off. He's charismatic but he's a lunatic.
"The weird thing about him is how much he still worships Escobar. He still says he loves him. But Escobar ran a business that made him the most powerful man on the planet, and Popeye was his right-hand man."
Jason Fox wore body armour for his foray into the deadly drug cartels' territory in Acapulco, Mexico
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Trailer for Narcos season three which portrays life after Pablo Escobar
Escobar's reign of terror in the Eighties and Nineties, chronicled in the 2015 Netflix TV series Narcos, saw him become the richest criminal in history, with an estimated wealth of £23billion, before Colombian National Police shot him dead in 1993.
But as Foxy discovered, since Escobar's death, the dark heart of drug smuggling has now shifted to Mexico.
As the number of rival Mexican drug cartels has multiplied and spread throughout the country in the past 12 years, 200,000 people have "disappeared" — which almost invariably means murdered.
Despite the Mexican government claiming to be cracking down, the most notorious cartel of them all, the Sinaloa, is now considered to be the biggest crime organisation on the planet.
Cartels are using dark methods such as hanging people from bridges to disembowelling them to send out warningsI
NSTAGRAM/JASON CARL FOX
Last year was Mexico's most violent ever, with 29,168 murders — and those were just the ones that were reported.
Despite his military experience, nothing could have prepared Foxy for Mexico's deadliest city, Acapulco — a battleground for around 20 competing cartels, with the second highest murder rate in the world.
In one scene, Foxy joins police as they investigate something suspicious dumped in the street.
What initially looks like rubbish turns out to be the latest casualty of the local turf war, with his severed limbs, head and penis left strewn across the road.
Pablo Escobar ordered John Jairo Velasquez to kill the love of his life Wendy Chavarriaga Gil after hearing a recording of her betraying his boss
Even more shocking is the discovery that those who butchered him were probably boys, the latest recruits of the drug cartels.
Foxy, also known to Channel 4 viewers for SAS: Who Dares Wins, said:
"The hitmen of today are now 14 or 15-year-olds doing all that morbid stuff.
"I've experienced some gruesome things but seeing that body was the most shocked I'd been. It was the thought behind it that's most harrowing. Someone's gone about doing that to someone in a chop house — they'd be all decked out, then they'd drag them in there and let them loose.
"They can use anything from knives to axes and angle grinders. That's way darker than any war or fighting scenario I've faced."
Pablo Escobar's reign of terror in South America is chronicled in the 2015 Netflix series Narcos
Rival Mexican cartels are using increasingly dark calling cards, ranging from hanging people from bridges to disembowelling them and using their innards to spell out warning messages.
Foxy met one Sinaloa cartel henchman, El Guero. He agreed to be interviewed only if he wore a mask and would not be not asked certain questions. Not only did Foxy suspect the man was high on drugs, but there was a hairy moment when something was lost in translation and the interviewee thought he had been asked a forbidden question.
( years ago, cartel employees were discouraged from using the product )
Foxy said: "That was the most scared I'd been throughout the whole visit. They said, 'Be under no illusions, if you f*** this up we're going to bury you in the desert.'
Hitman Wolf Boy was still at school where he was ordered to murder his first victim
"He had his pistol out and we were just stood there, all looking at each other. My mouth went dry.
"My first ever interview I'd done in front of a camera was with this hitman in Mexico, speaking a different language. Tellingly, a few weeks later we found out he'd been shot and killed." Another Sinaloan gunman chuckled menacingly as he told Foxy: "I like being a mother- f***er. I haven't killed a reporter or someone like you — but the bad thing is, I'd like to."
But not all the henchman revelled in being evil. Jason met young Texan Rosalio Reta — nicknamed Wolf Boy — who seemed to regret his past with the drug smugglers. He had been jailed for life for committing 30 murders after being enlisted by the Mexican Gulf cartel aged 13. His initiation ceremony involved shooting a man.
Jason Fox spoke to Cartel leaders for Channel 4's Meet the Drug Lords: Inside The Real Narcos
Former Marine Jason Fox spoke to federal police about how they are fighting a war against drugs in Mexico
He said: "These people took me to the person in charge. He pulled out a handgun and told me to kill the person kneeling in front of him — and I just shot him.
"Then he said he'd put me on his payroll. He said, 'Go back to school. I'll call you when I need you.'"
Wolf Boy explained that just as Foxy had trained with the SAS, he quickly got the same education in how to kill with guns.
He added: "You practise with paper targets, we practised with live targets, rival cartel members. They used to be like cattle for the slaughterhouse.
"There was a house they'd take them to and they'd say, 'If you make it out alive we'll give you your freedom,' and they'd throw you in there." Wolf Boy also tortured the cartel's enemies to reveal information.
He said: "I've done simple stuff like pulling teeth out or cutting fingers off, then start cooking them alive. You always got them to talk."
Though it is all highly shocking, Foxy was most disturbed by the poverty of many Mexicans, which meant some felt they had no choice but to turn to drug gangs to survive.
And as Western countries still demand cocaine and heroin, the drug war can only get worse.
Jason Fox says he had 'rapport' with Escobar's 'reformed' former hitman
Foxy said: "It's such a difficult war to fight because there's a demand there and very poor parts of the world that are being taken advantage of by organised crime. "And the fact is that if we neglect those parts of the world then they'll always be taken advantage of."
Meet The Drug Lords: Inside The Real Narcos is on Channel 4, 9pm, August 2.
Play Video
Footage appears to show tourists snorting cocaine off Pablo Escobar's grave in insensitive new trend
CRIME STATS
200,000 people killed in Mexico since 2006
29,000 murders in the country in 2017 alone
25-30 tonnes of cocaine imported annually to the UK
£72 is average price of one gram of cocaine in UK
£10.7bn cost to UK each of drug trafficking
35 bodies of members of the Los Zetas drug cartel were abandoned in front of a Mexico shopping mall in 2011
Figures reveal that 200,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, with 25,000 of them in 2017 alone
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