The fall of the head of the largest drug gang in the country represents the main success of the government of Iván Duque in the fight against organized crime.
“This is the hardest blow that drug trafficking has suffered in this century in our country (…), only comparable with the fall of Pablo Escobar,” celebrated the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, in a message to the nation on Saturday night after confirming the capture of Dairo Antonio Úsuga (alias Otoniel), the most wanted drug trafficker in the country.
Some 500 soldiers backed by 22 helicopters were deployed in the municipality of Necoclí (northwest) to carry out the operation, in which a police officer was killed.
It was “the most important insertion in the jungle that has been seen in the military history of Colombia,” according to the president.
For his capture, the United States offered a reward of five million dollars and Colombia, about $ 800,000.
A live transmission of the Police on social networks showed the 50-year-old capo landing in Bogotá handcuffed and guarded by a dozen uniformed men. He was taken to an institution building amid heavy security measures, collects AFP.
During the last few weeks, Otoniel “He did not arrive at any house, sleeping in rainy conditions without approaching residences,” explained the director of the Police, General Jorge Vargas.
“He was moving with eight safety rings,” added Vargas.
The fall of the head of the largest drug gang in Colombia represents the main success of the government of the Conservative president in the fight against organized crime in the country.
“There are extradition orders for this criminal and we will work with the authorities to also achieve this task,” the president anticipated.
Otoniel, indicted by the US justice in 2009, is required for drug trafficking by the Southern District of New York court.
Úsuga leads a group of paramilitaries calling themselves Self-Defense Forces Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC) and is present in almost 300 towns in the country, according to the independent think tank Indepaz.
He was captured in an area near the border with Panama and one of the main strongholds of the AGC, also known as Clan del Golfo.
The Colombian Defense Minister, Diego Molano, said, after the capture, that the Clan del Golfo has become in recent years “the greatest threat” due to the fact that “the greater number of tons of coca that Colombia took to markets of the United States and Europe was managed and articulated ”by this criminal organization, he refers BBC.
The Colombian press has reported that against Otoniel there is a red circular issued by Interpol for multiple homicide, multiple kidnapping and conspiracy to commit a crime, among other crimes. In addition, it is the subject of more than 120 judicial processes opened for all types of crimes.
The Government points to the group, which is financed mainly through drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion, as one of those responsible for the wave of violence that is passing through the country, the worst since the signing of a peace pact with the FARC guerrilla in 2016.
“It will have to be the end of this organization that has done so much damage to Colombians,” said General Vargas.
In 2017 Otoniel had announced his intention to reach an agreement to submit to justice, but the Government responded with fierce persecution.
The organization has been decimated by a series of blows by the authorities against the capo’s close circle, who hid themselves sleeping in the jungle and without using telephones, according to the police.
Otoniel He went on to head the Gulf Clan after the death of his brother Juan de Dios, Giovanni, in clashes with the police in 2012. He began in arms as a guerrilla of the Popular Liberation Army, a Marxist guerrilla demobilized in 1991.
After surrendering his weapons, he returned to fight in extreme right-wing paramilitary groups that sowed terror in the 1990s with massacres and atrocities committed in their fight against extreme left-wing guerrillas.
Many of these self-defense groups demobilized in 2006 at the initiative of the Álvaro Uribe government (2002-2010). But Otoniel decided to stay in the illegality.
After half a century of fighting drug trafficking, Colombia continues to be the world’s leading producer of cocaine and the United States, the largest consumer of this drug. (I)
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