2023-08-09 04:46:40
Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias Otoniel, leader of the Colombian gang Clan del Golfo, was sentenced Tuesday, August 8, to forty-five years in prison by a US federal court in New York for drug trafficking.
Judge Dora Irizarry, of federal court in Brooklyn, New York, followed the prosecutor’s submissions, saying it was “without doubt one of the most serious cases of drug trafficking” never presented to this court.
Extradited by Colombia in May 2022, Otoniel, 51, pleaded guilty in January 2023 to international cocaine trafficking, admitting to having brought more than 96 tons of cocaine into the United States via Central America and Mexico. He faced a sentence ranging from twenty years in prison to life. He was sentenced to forty-five years in prison on each of the counts, but he will benefit from a confusion of sentences and will therefore serve forty-five years in total. He had also accepted in January a judgment of confiscation of 216 million dollars (197 million euros).
“Murders have been committed”
Prosecutor Francisco Navarro considered that Otoniel was, without a doubt, “Colombia’s most dangerous terrorist of this century”as well as Pablo Escobar, an emblematic figure in drug trafficking.
The American Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, welcomed this condemnation, in a press release from his services. “This sentence sends a clear message that the Department of Justice will find and hold to account the leaders of murderous drug trafficking organizations who harm the American people, wherever they are and however long it takes. »he assured.
The defendant admitted in January that, within the framework of the “military work, murders have been committed” by his organization, made up of former members of far-right paramilitary groups and which could have numbered up to 6,000 men. He also specified that the clan “provided security for laboratories and drug traffickers and levied taxes” for cocaine transiting through territories under their control.
The defense, which had requested a maximum sentence of twenty-five years, did not specify whether it wished to appeal. She has fourteen days to decide.
90% of drugs on the US market come from Colombia
Seven months after his arrest in Colombia, the extradition of Otoniel, who had ruled the organization since 2012, was followed by a bloody campaign of assassinations against police officers in his country. But, after the election of left-wing president Gustavo Petro, in favor of negotiations with several armed groups, Otoniel had asked his gang in August 2022 to put an end to this wave of murders.
Also seated in the dock were the number one of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin Guzman, known as “el Chapo”, sentenced to life imprisonment, and Daniel Rendon Herrera, known as “Don Mario”, founder and former chief of the clan. del Golfo, sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
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According to the DEA, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, the del Golfo clan collaborated with the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States. According to the agency, 90% of the drugs hitting the US market come from Colombia and are often laced with fentanyl, a powerful and deadly substance added by Mexican cartels.
“He must pay where he committed his crimes. If Otoniel is Colombian (…) he must pay to the Colombian authorities. But what he did here, he can’t pay for in the United States.”deplored Aurelio Benicio Mendoza, president of an association of families of victims of the del Golfo clan in the region of Uraba (North-West), where the cartel operates.
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