A Medellin avocado seller narrowly escaped extradition to the U.S. Saturday after a case of mistaken identity, reports Radio Caracol.
22-year-old Hernan Alonso Ruiz was celebrating at the weekend after being reunited with his family following a four day fiasco in which he was captured by the Prosecutor General’s Technical Investigation Team after it mistakenly identified him as a drug trafficker with the same name.
The circus began last Wednesday when Ruiz voluntarily presented himself at the Prosecutor General’s office in Medellin, after investigators called to his house searching for the drug trafficker alias “Federico”, who shares the same full name as Ruiz.
A lost ID card meant that Ruiz was unable to prove his real identity, so the fruit vendor was transferred to Bogota the next day and held in a bunker to await extradition to the U.S., only being released on Saturday when the mistake was finally identified.
Ruiz’s neighbours – who organized a march during the week in protest at his wrongful arrest – threw him a welcome home party on Saturday to celebrate his release.
