NEW YORK.- The US justice will announce on Tuesday the sentence against the Colombian drug lord Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, alias “Otoniel”, who in January pleaded guilty to three charges of drug trafficking.
The prosecution requests 45 years in prison for the once all-powerful and bloodthirsty boss of the Clan del Golfo (CDG), one of the most powerful drug cartels along with that of Sinaloa, of the Mexican Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, a “sufficient sentence but not more than necessary.
Judge Dora Irizarry, of the Eastern District Court of New York, in Brooklyn, is scheduled to announce the ruling at 11:00 a.m. (3:00 p.m. GMT) at a hearing in which Otoniel, 51, extradited to the United States on the 4th, will appear. May 2022.
On January 25, Otoniel pleaded guilty to charges of continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to import drugs, and maritime drug trafficking, avoiding a lengthy and costly trial.
In his statement before the judge, the one who was supreme leader of the CDG from 2012 to 2021, a terrorist, paramilitary and drug trafficking organization accused of being “one of the largest cocaine distributors in the world”, acknowledged having sent 96 to the United States .8 tons of cocaine through Central America and Mexico.
It also agreed to pay 216 million dollars in compensation and fines that could reach 22 million dollars. Once his prison sentence has been completed, the capo, with health problems, according to the prosecution, will be on probation for 5 years.
Otoniel’s conviction puts an end to an era of powerful drug traffickers who led cocaine trafficking from Colombia -producer of 90% of the cocaine that reaches the United States-, passing through Mexico and Central America.
Among them, the Mexican Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States, or Daniel Rendón Herrera, who was the boss of Úsuga and founder of the CDG, sentenced to 35 years in prison, also by US justice.
Next February the trial of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is scheduled to begin, also for drug trafficking.
army of hitmen
During his “brutal reign” as supreme leader of the CDG, also known as “Los Ubareños”, Otoniel resorted to violence to protect the members of the clan -which came to be around 6,000-, silence any witnesses and attack the security forces with the help of an “army of hit men” who “kidnapped, tortured, and killed the competitors and those they considered traitors to the organization and their families,” according to US justice.
Already from prison in the United States, following his extradition, the capo showed his power by unleashing a bloody reprisal in 11 of the 32 departments of Colombia, in which five people died, including two policemen and a soldier, in attacks on police stations, roadblocks and sabotage of the public transport system.
After years of evading arrest, Otoniel was detained on October 23, 2021 in the province of Antioquia, near the border with Panama.
Three different courts in the United States had been on his trail since 2009.
Almost illiterate, the Colombian began his criminal career as a member of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary organization that the United States included on the list of terrorist organizations in 2001.
According to the DEA, the US anti-drug agency, the CDG collaborated with the Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación to introduce drugs into the United States.
Pending accounts in Colombia
The Colombian justice also accuses him of homicide, terrorism, recruitment of minors, kidnapping and sexual crimes, among other crimes that he committed when he was a guerrilla and paramilitary, before becoming the most wanted drug trafficker in Colombia.
Born into a peasant family in northwestern Colombia, Úsuga is accused of abusing girls and adolescents in his areas of influence.
His sister Nini Johana Úsuga, alias “La Negra”, has also been extradited to the United States to answer for drug trafficking crimes.
FOUNTAIN: With information from AFP
