The president declared that the captured drug lord was one of the most feared in the world.
The capture of Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, alias “Otoniel,” the most wanted drug trafficker in Colombia, is the biggest blow to drug trafficking since the fall of Pablo Escobar in 1993, President Iván Duque said this Saturday.
“This is the hardest blow that drug trafficking has been dealt in this century in our country and it is only comparable to the fall of Pablo Escobar,” Duque said in a statement given at the Tolemaida military base, in the center of the city. country, to confirm the arrest of the leader of the Gulf Clan.
Duque explained: “An articulated and meticulous joint operation has been advanced under the name of Operation Osiris and in this operation Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias ‘Otoniel’, the top leader of the Gulf Clan, has been captured.”
The Government considers “Otoniel” one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the country and offered a reward of up to 3,000 million pesos (almost 800,000 dollars) for his head, while the US, which has him on the “Clinton List” of the most dangerous drug traffickers and money launderers in the world, it offered up to five million dollars.
The president asserted that “alias ‘Otoniel’ was the most feared drug trafficker in the world,” and he is also a “murderer of policemen, soldiers, social leaders, as well as a recruiter of minors.”
The drug trafficker chief, who had been surrounded and besieged by the Army and the Police for months in Urabá, in the northwest of the country, was captured in a remote area, near the Nudo de Paramillo, between two hills, according to the Police.
“Otoniel” appears in images released by different media smiling, dressed in black trousers and a shirt and with his hands tied behind his back, when he is led by soldiers armed with rifles after getting out of a military helicopter.
THE END OF THE GULF CLAN
In addition, the capture of the leader of this group, the largest criminal gang in the country dedicated to drug trafficking, represents “the end of the Clan del Golfo,” according to Duque.
“To all those who have belonged to this criminal structure, the message that I send them is clear and forceful: either they submit to justice immediately or the full weight of the law will fall on them in the same way,” the president threatened.
According to the Colombian government, the Clan del Golfo, a group that emerged from the demobilization of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), is responsible for sending tons of cocaine to the United States, as well as setting up a criminal network dedicated to collecting extortions from entrepreneurs and merchants in the Urabá region, on the border with Panama, and mainly on the Atlantic coast.
Alias “Otoniel” was intensely searched since 2015 in the Urabá region by thousands of police and military participants in the two phases of “Operation Agamemnon”, through which dozens of men under his command were captured and seized tons of cocaine.
In addition to being accused of drug trafficking and belonging to a criminal gang, the president stressed today that he is also an “abuser of minors” and “is also known for this dementia that led him to repeatedly abuse children and adolescents.”
Extradition orders weigh on him, which the Government will work to respond, “without this being an obstacle so that the whole truth about the rest of the crimes in the country is also known,” added the president. (I)
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