Part of Pablo Escobar’s ranch to be given to women scarred by Colombia conflict

Estate was abandoned after Escobar’s 1993 killing and later became a theme park, and now government says given female farmers will get land

A slice of Pablo Escobar’s once-lavish ranch – a symbol of the drug lord’s enormous wealth and home to his infamous “cocaine hippos” – is being given to women scarred by Colombia’s armed conflict, announced Gustavo Petro, the president.

Escobar, Colombia’s most notorious narco-trafficker and former head of the powerful Medellín cartel, became one of the richest men in the world in the late 1980s, with Forbes magazine estimating his fortune at $25bn.