Dairo Antonio Úsuga, also known as Otoniel, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison in the U.S. He was the elusive boss of a cartel and paramilitary group with a strong hold on northern Colombia.
was seen as one of the world’s most dangerous drug lords, the elusive boss of a cartel and paramilitary group with a blood-drenched grip on much of northern Colombia.
The former leader of the notorious Clan de Golfo, or Gulf Clan, had pleaded guilty in January to high-level drug trafficking charges, admitting he oversaw the smuggling of tons of U.S.-bound cocaine and acknowledging “there was a lot of violence.” Úsuga and his lawyers sought to cast him as a product of his homeland’s woes — remote rural hardship, surrounded by guerilla warfare, recruited into it at age 16 and hardened by decades of losing friends, fellow soldiers and loved ones to violence.
For decades, nearly every Colombian’s life has been touched by the country’s many-sided conflict. A mish-mash of leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups, narcotraffickers and other bands of criminals have warred for control of mountainous swaths of the country. Úsuga fought alongside both left- and right-wing combatants at different points in his life before becoming part and then supreme leader of the Gulf Clan, known as one of Colombia’s most powerful and brutal forces. He was the country’s most-wanted kingpin before his arrest in 2021, and he had been under indictment in the U.S. since 2009.
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