Head of the powerful “Gulf Clan”, he appeared before a judge in Brooklyn. The opposition and the organizations of victims suspect the authorities of having given the criminal to the Americans to prevent him from speaking.
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Closed shops and shutters, streets and deserted schools: this Thursday, May 5, television cameras film ghost villages in northeast Colombia. The day before, drug traffickers Dario Antonio Usuga, alias Otoniel, 50, was extradited to the United States. In retaliation, members of his criminal organization, the “Gulf clan”, said that they decreed an “armed strike” of five days. An armed strike is the term that criminal organizations use here to force the population and paralyze the activity of a region. Four departments and a few peripheral districts of Medellin, the second city in the country, were affected by the confinement order. According to the authorities, an itinerant seller has been murdered and around thirty burned vehicles, blocking several roads in the region.
Wednesday in Bogota, it was under strong escort that Mr. Usuga was brought to the airport: four armored trucks, five police cars and a few dozen armed bikers were mobilized for his trip. Until the moment of getting on the plane, otoniel, handcuffed, bearing bulletproof vest and khaki helmet, seemed to smile. But the man risks a very heavy trouble in the United States which offered $ 5 million (4.7 million euros) for his capture. Accused of leading a criminal enterprise between 2003 and 2021 and of having imported several tonnes of cocaine in the United States, Mr. Usuga appeared on Thursday before a Federal Court of Brooklyn. He pleaded not guilty.
In Colombia, Otoniel is the subject of more than 120 stop mandates for extortion, terrorism, forced recruitment, sexual violence, massacres, traffic and port of weapons. “It is the most dangerous drug trafficker in the world, the murderer of social leaders and police, a rapist of children and adolescents,” said President Ivan Duque, confirming his compatriots extradition of Mr. Usaga. The Head of State added: “This criminal can only be compared to Pablo Escobar”, the famous Colombian drug trafficker, head of the Medellin cartel, killed by the police in 1993 and immortalized in the Narcos series.
Regional criminal bands
“Today, the legality, the rule of law, the public force and the justice triumph, welcomed Mr. Duque in his televised speech. Violence has never won and she will not win. “But the Colombian state is definitely struggling to control large sections of its territory.
Otoniel was arrested in October 2021, near the city of Necocli in the Uraba region, which he originates from, in the northwest of the country. Unlike Pablo Escobar, Otoniel was largely unknown to the general public before its arrest. Son of a peasant, the man spent his life in hiding. As a teenager, he joined the little guerrilla warfare of the People’s Liberation Army (EPL) which demobilizes in 1991. A few years later, Otoniel appeared on the lists of far -right militias, the United Autdefenses of Colombia, which deposit in their Tour les Arms in 2006. He then joined the Gaiatanists, founded by his brother, who take control of drug trafficking throughout the northeast of the country.
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