Peru anti-drug police recaptured French drug trafficker Jean Philipe Vizcario just over a month after he escaped from a Lima hospital disguised as a doctor, said Police General Miguel Hidalgo on Tuesday.
“We were very close to our objective for the past six or seven days,” said Hidalgo, who coordinated the late-night police intervention. “We have been following a woman that is sentimentally involved with the captive.”
Vizcario, 41, escaped from Lima’s Hipólito Unanue Hospital on Jan. 30, 2009. Hospitalized for varicose veins, Vizcario dupped hospital and Peru National Penitentiary Institute, or Inpe, security by posing as a doctor.
Since his escape, Vizcario — sentenced to 25 years in prison for drug trafficking in 2003 — had been hiding out in a hotel located in Lima’s posh Surco district. A forged Paraguayan passport was found in his room.
