A young courier was handed a briefcase and told it held a wiretap recorder to spy on two passengers—only to flip the switch five minutes after takeoff, detonating Semtex that blew a commercial Boeing 727 out of the sky. The reason might surprise you. On the morning of November 27, 1989, Avianca Flight 203 lined up on the runway at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, bound for Cali. Onboard were 101 passengers and six crew members. Among them was a young, naive recruit named Alberto Prieto. Cartel operatives had dressed him in a sharp suit, given him a briefcase, and purchased his ticket for seat 15F, right above the aircraft’s main fuel tanks. Prieto had been recruited under a lie: cartel handlers told him the briefcase contained high-tech audio equipment to eavesdrop on two businessmen seated nearby. His only instruction was to wait until the plane climbed into cruising altitude, reach down, and flip the recorder's switch. Inside the case lay a block of military-grade Semtex plastic explosive wired directly to an electronic detonator. Five minutes into the climb, at 13,000 feet over the municipality of Soacha: Prieto turned the switch. The blast ripped through the cabin floor, instantly piercing the fuselage and igniting the primary fuel tank vapors. A massive secondary fireball tore the Boeing 727 in half. Burning wreckage, luggage, and victims rained across a three-mile radius over the hills of Soacha. All 107 people on board were killed instantly, along with three people on the ground crushed by falling fuselage debris. The bombing was ordered directly by Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel’s military wing, commanded by Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera ("La Quica"). Their intended target: César Gaviria Trujillo, the Liberal Party presidential frontrunner who had taken up the mantle of the slain Luis Carlos Galán, running on a staunch platform of extraditing cartel kingpins to the United States. Cartel informants at the airport had reported that Gaviria and his campaign entourage were scheduled to board Flight 203 to Cali. Gaviria never set foot on the plane. At the very last minute, his chief of security grew uneasy over security breaches at the boarding gate and persuaded the candidate to cancel his seat and take a private flight instead. Escobar had blown up an entire civilian airliner to assassinate a man who was sitting miles away in a secure office in Bogotá. The atrocity marked the definitive turning point of the Colombian Drug War: International Jurisdiction: Two of the passengers aboard Flight 203 were American citizens. Under federal law, the United States gained direct jurisdiction to pursue the perpetrators of an overseas terrorist attack against US nationals. The Hunt for La Quica: In 1991, DEA agents tracked Muñoz Mosquera to Queens, New York. Indicted in federal court for the bombing, "La Quica" was convicted on 13 counts, including terrorism, racketeering, and the murder of US citizens, and sentenced to ten consecutive life sentences plus 45 years at ADX Florence supermax. The State Strikes Back: Public horror permanently eradicated whatever lingering "Robin Hood" sympathy Escobar held. The Colombian government declared all-out war, partnering with the DEA, CIA, and the specialized Search Bloc (Bloque de Búsqueda). Gaviria went on to win the presidency, cementing the very extradition policies Escobar tried to stop.