RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – At least six dead and 180 vehicles attacked, most of them burned, are the result of an “armed attack” by the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest criminal gang, which has besieged dozens of towns in 11 departments of the country, authorities said Sunday (8).
The Defense Ministry said the criminal actions of the Gulf clan, also known as Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), led to the murders of three civilians, a police officer, and two soldiers.
The Gulf clan’s “armed strike,” which began last Thursday and will continue through Tuesday, is in retaliation for the extradition of its top leader, Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias “Otoniel,” to the United States the previous day.
In several Colombian departments, the group has restricted commerce, traffic on the roads, and the mobility of people, threatening to attack those who travel on the streets, even if they are in caravans escorted by the army.
On Saturday night, the municipality of Frontino, in the department of Antioquia, experienced difficult hours as a police station near the village of Nutibara was besieged.
“This afternoon, we were informed by the community near the village of Nutibara that armed men are approaching the village intending to harass and capture the center of this village,” said Frontino Mayor Jorge Hugo Elejalde.
DUQUE URGES NOT TO LEAVE POLICE OFFICERS ALONE
He urged the central government not to leave the city’s police officers alone in the face of the criminal attacks and asked Colombian President Iván Duque to “take the case into his own hands.”
“It is very easy to be brave from Casa de Nariño with 300 police officers and bodyguards protecting him. It is time for him to come to the regions where we suffer, suffer hunger, and there is no way to bring out the wounded and sick,” he said.
Since the beginning of the “armed strike,” authorities have arrested 92 people, 21 of them on court orders and 71 in flagrante delicto. Among those detained is the second leader of the Clan del Golfo in the department of Magdalena (north), alias “Pedro.”
In 37 raids, 12 firearms, 481 cartridges, six engravings, 23 cell phones, and more than 50 million pesos (about US$12,000) were also seized.
Otoniel,” described by Colombian President Ivan Duque as dangerous as Pablo Escobar and a “murderer of social leaders, abuser of children and teenagers, murderer of police officers and one of the most dangerous criminals in the world,” was extradited to the U.S. on Wednesday to face drug trafficking charges.
Usuga pleaded not guilty a day later before a federal judge in New York and was charged with, among other things, “conducting a continuing criminal enterprise” and “participating in an international conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cocaine, knowing and intending that the drugs would be illegally imported into the United States” between 2003 and October 2021, when he was arrested.