The Colombian Police captured the alleged drug trafficker Juan Alberto Muñoz Terán, alias ‘Lápiz’, cousin and brother-in-law of Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias ‘Otoniel’, who was the top boss of the Clan del Golfo and ended up extradited to the United States in 2022, reported the director of that institution, General William René Salamanca.
Muñoz is, according to the Police, the coordinator of drug trafficking of the Clan del Golfo, the main criminal gang in the country, and is accused of sending five tons of cocaine monthly from the Catatumbo region, bordering Venezuela, to the United States and Europe, between other destinations.
“In development of ‘Operation Agamemnon’, in Medellín we captured Juan Alberto Muñoz Terán, alias ‘Lápiz’, drug trafficking coordinator and criminal articulator of the ‘Luis Orlando Padierna Peña’ substructure of the Clan del Golfo, allegedly responsible for sending around five tons of cocaine per month from the Catatumbo area to the United States and Europe,” Salamanca wrote in his X account.
General Salamanca accompanied the publication with a video of the operation carried out in Medellín in which a group of agents can be seen entering a house where Muñoz was.
More details
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, also reported the capture and added that Muñoz is a cousin of ‘Otoniel’, considered one of the most dangerous and wanted bosses in the world, sentenced in August 2023 in New York to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, considering him guilty of introducing almost 100 tons of drugs into the United States.
General Salamanca added that the detainee’s criminal record indicates that Muñoz has been committing crimes for 16 years and was delegated by Jobanis de Jesús Ávila, alias ‘Chiquito malo’, who is now the head of the Clan del Golfo, to expand that organization in the department of Norte de Santander.
Likewise, the detainee is accused of extortion, homicides and forced displacement in Cúcuta, the departmental capital.
The Prosecutor’s Office and the Police worked together in this operation, which aims to dismantle the drug trafficking structures of this criminal organization.
Arrest warrants
Last August, the Prosecutor’s Office lifted the arrest warrants against three leaders of the Gulf Clan who will participate in a “space for socio-legal conversation” with the Government, which seeks “the end of that organization.”
According to the resolution of the Prosecutor’s Office, those who benefited from the suspension of the arrest warrants are Orozman Orlando Osten Blanco, alias ‘Rodrigo Flechas’; Elkin Casarrubia, called ‘the Priest’, and Luis Armando Pérez Castañeda, known as ‘Bruno’.
Contrary to the other three negotiating tables set up – with the ELN, with the FARC dissidents of the Central General Staff (EMC) and the Second Marquetalia – the one of the Clan del Golfo seeks the submission of that organization since the Government does not recognizes political status.
Bogotá / EFE
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