Colombia extradites its biggest drug lord “Otoniel” to the US

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Colombian President Ivan Duque said that Colombia’s biggest drug trafficker, “Otoniel”, head of the Gulf Clan, was extradited on May 4 to the United States to stand trial in a New York court.

“Dairo Antonio Úsuga alias Otoniel has been extradited, (…) a murderer of social leaders, abuser of children and adolescents, murderer of policemen, and one of the most dangerous criminals on the planet,” the president announced in a public statement from the seat of government.

Otoniel was taken in a large police caravan from his place of detention to a military airport on the city’s outskirts, where he was loaded onto a DEA anti-drug agency plane.

Images released by the local press show him handcuffed and seated on a plane. Colombian police and an Interpol official accompanied him.

Otoniel was arrested in October 2021 after an intense months-long search through the jungles near Panama, in the country’s northwest.

He commanded the Gulf Clan, responsible for 30% (some 300 tons) of cocaine exports from the world’s largest cocaine producer.

The Colombian justice system also accuses him of homicide, terrorism, recruitment of minors, kidnapping, and sexual crimes, among other crimes he committed when he was a guerrilla and paramilitary before becoming the country’s most-wanted drug trafficker.

The victims had requested the “suspension” of the extradition, alleging their right to know the truth and to reparations. But the Colombian justice system gave the green light to his extradition on Wednesday, May 4, Usuga’s defense team told AFP.

“This bandit was extradited to serve sentences for drug trafficking in the United States. But I want to clarify that, once he serves those sentences, he will return to Colombia to pay for the crimes he committed in our country,” Duque said.

With a force of some 1,600 fighters, the Gulf Clan is present in nearly 300 (out of 1,100) municipalities, according to the independent think tank Indepaz.

For the government, the capture and subsequent extradition of Otoniel is the most significant blow to drug trafficking since the death of Pablo Escobar, the cocaine kingpin who was shot dead in 1993 in Medellin by authorities.

SEXUAL PREDATOR

Born into a peasant family in northwest Colombia, Usuga has been singled out by authorities for abusing girls and adolescents in his areas of interference.

In 2017, he had announced his intention to reach an agreement to submit to justice, but the government responded with fierce persecution.

The Clan has been decimated by a series of strikes by authorities against Otoniel’s close circle. Following his capture, Duque proclaimed the beginning of the end for what is considered the country’s biggest drug gang.

Its members still carry out sporadic attacks against the security forces. The most recent one killed six soldiers in one of their strongholds.

Otoniel became head of the group after the death of his brother Juan de Dios, “Giovanni,” in clashes with police in 2012. He took up arms as a guerrilla in the Popular Liberation Army, a Marxist guerrilla group demobilized in 1991.

After turning in his weapons, he fought in extreme right-wing paramilitary groups that sowed terror in the 1990s with massacres and atrocities committed in their fight against radical left-wing guerrillas.

The bulk of these self-defense groups demobilized in 2006 after reaching an agreement with the government of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). But ‘Otoniel’ decided to remain illegal.

After half a century of fighting drug trafficking, Colombia remains the world’s leading producer of cocaine.

The United States, the largest consumer of the drug exported by Colombia, accuses Otoniel and his organization of smuggling at least 73 tons of cocaine into its territory between 2003 and 2012.

With information from AFP