NEW YORK – The Colombian Dairo Antonio Úsuga David “Otoniel”, considered one of the most dangerous and wanted bosses in the world, was sentenced this Tuesday in New York to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, considering him guilty of introducing almost 100 tons of drugs in United States.
The penalty will also include the payment of $216 million in compensation and $22 million more in fines.
Federal judge Dora Irizarry thus imposed the sentence that the prosecution had requested from the magistrate despite the fact that the 51-year-old leader of the violent Clan del Golfo pleaded guilty in January seeking prison benefits, turning his statement around in a first moment, when he was extradited from Colombia in May 2022.
His guilty plea includes the charges of directing a criminal and criminal organization for drug trafficking, conspiring to manufacture and distribute cocaine, and conspiring for the maritime traffic of this drug up to a total of 96.8 tons introduced into the United States.
Irizarry, who said that this is the most serious case (due to the amounts of drugs) that he has had to deal with in his career, reasoned his sentence with the argument that the violence caused by the Clan del Golfo had an enormous impact on the United States, leaving many deaths and a lot of violence “also among children and young people”.
OTONIEL ASKED FORGIVENESS FROM THE US, COLOMBIA AND THE VICTIMS
Otoniel, wearing the khaki suit of the prisoners and without separating from the headphones with which he followed the hearing, apologized in his last intervention to the US government, the Colombian government, the victims caused by drug trafficking and their families “for all what I did”.
In order to justify herself, she argued that she had “grown up in an environment of drug trafficking and violence,” but Judge Irizarry replied that this did not serve as an excuse because she too, of Puerto Rican origin, had grown up in the Bronx in a violent environment and left her neighborhood. “lots of productive people.”
“You can’t cover the sun with one finger,” she said in Spanish so that Otoniel would understand her.
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Otoniel took advantage of his last words to launch political messages, such as asking the US government to support the open peace processes in Colombia between the government and various guerrilla groups linked in some way to cocaine trafficking.
Otoniel’s lawyers tried to seek a 25-year-old sentence for him, alleging that other drug traffickers tried in the US without agreeing to collaborate with Justice had obtained lighter sentences, but the judge cut those arguments short by responding that the cases had nothing to do with see given the seriousness of the facts judged in the case of Otoniel.
THE JUDGE DOUBTED HER DISASSEMBLY FROM THE GOLFO CLAN
Finally, the lawyers from Otoniel’s team requested that, once the sentence was pronounced, the judge relax the confinement conditions — she has only been able to see her legal team, they insisted, for several months — but Irizarry said that this decision It is not up to her, but to the Department of Prisons.
In any case, she was in favor of maintaining maximum isolation for Otoniel, since she questioned his requests for forgiveness — “I would not make them if I were not sitting in court,” she said — and considered that an eventual relaxation of the Communications can help him to keep in touch with the Clan del Golfo through the mediation of other prisoners.
In fact, he also questioned his “political” appeals before the court this Tuesday, and said with a certain irony that in the event that he had the chance to speak with other Colombian prisoners also imprisoned for drug trafficking, he doubted it would be to talk about the peace process in his country.
Since his extradition and while he awaited trial, Otoniel was imprisoned in the Brooklyn jail with preventive status, but now he will probably be transferred to a final prison to serve his sentence.
