Ex-Colombia drug lord 'Chupeta' testifies against alleged Mexican counterpart 'El Chapo'
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NEW YORK — It may have been one of the rare times when two of the world's top alleged drug lords were in the same room without a mega-kilo narcotics deal going down.

Juan Carlos Ramírez-Abadía a former leader of Colombia's Norte Valle cocaine cartel, testified as a prosecution witness Thursday against Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, an alleged leader of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Based on the testimony, it may have been a memory lane afternoon for Chupeta — the Ramirez-Abadia nickname that means "lollipop" — and El Chapo, which means "shorty."

Ramírez-Abadía testified that his organization used Guzmán's operation to smuggle tons of Colombian cocaine through Mexico and into the U.S.

Recounting a Mexico meeting during the early 1990s, he said the two struck a deal in which the Colombia cartel would fly their cocaine to Mexico, and Guzmán's group would smuggle it to major U.S. cities.

Ramírez-Abadíasaid he happily agreed to Guzmán's request for the purest drug product possible because he wanted "a reputation for myself for my cocaine being so good."

The Colombian witness was captured in Brazil in 2007, despite repeated plastic surgeries that radically altered his appearance. Federal investigators in the U.S. confirmed his identity with the use of voice recognition technology, a defense lawyer said at the time.

Ramírez-Abadía pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cocaine for export to the U.S. in a 2007 Brooklyn federal court hearing after he was extradited from Brazil.

The top charge in a 2004 superseding indictment accused Ramírez-Abadía and alleged co-conspirators of exporting more than 500,000 kilos of cocaine worth more than $10 billion "from Colombia to Mexico and ultimately to the United States."

Court records in the case show that he was not required to attend an April 2018 status conference based in part on undisclosed personal health issues. U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, who also is presiding over Guzmán's trial, ordered the transcript of the session sealed on grounds that disclosure could compromise Ramírez-Abadía's security.

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