The British citizen received 33 months after he attempted to buy a plane in the early '90s
By Associated Press
Published October 10, 2004
to attack Pablo Escobar.
MIAMI - A longtime British mercenary received a 33-month federal prison sentence Friday for his role in plotting to buy a Vietnam-era jet to kill Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s.
David Tomkins, 64, had pleaded guilty in June and could have been sentenced to a maximum 41-month term. He is expected to be deported after his term. "I can't turn back the hands of time," Tomkins told U. S. District Judge Aldalberto Jordan. "But I in no way intended to do any insult or any injury to the United States."
An informant introduced Tomkins in 1991 to an undercover Custom Service agent pretending to be an arms dealer. The former soldier of fortune and safecracker said he was looking for an attack plane, and the agent offered a plane equipped with military machine guns. But Tomkins said he wanted something equipped to drop bombs, and made a $25,000 down payment on a $270,000 A-37B Dragonfly.
Tomkins brought a man he identified as retired Colombian Gen. Jorge Salcedo when the pair inspected the Cessna at an airport in the Miami suburb of Opa-locka in December 1991. Prosecutors say Salcedo was a member of the Cali drug cartel, the rival to Escobar's deadly Medellin cartel. The deal for the Cessna was never consummated because Tomkins fled the United States when he became suspicious he was being set up. He didn't know he was named in a 1994 sealed indictment.
Tomkins stayed out of the United States until Aug. 31, 2003, when he arrived in Houston to enroll in a U.S. Army chemical weapons training course needed to qualify for a security job guarding Iraqi airports. He was arrested when his name was found on a government domestic watch list.
