The Colombian government has received a formal request from the United States to extradite Otoniel, the powerful drug lord who was arrested in October and is awaiting formal approval, the Latin American president said on Thursday. Ivan Duke.
“The government has received a formal request from the United States for Otoniel to be extradited and forwarded it to justice,” Duchess told reporters.
The most wanted drug dealer in Colombia, the world’s number one cocaine producer, Clan del Golfo gang leader Dairo Antonio Usuga, better known by his nickname “Otoniel”, 50, was arrested during an operation. conducted jointly by the police and army in the jungle of northwestern Colombia on October 23rd.
U.S. authorities have offered to pay more than $ 5 million for his arrest. He has been prosecuted in the United States since 2009; requests for his extradition have been filed in New York and Miami courts.
The Colombian government hopes that “this process” will be completed “quickly” in order to “extradite this dangerous criminal”, according to the head of state, who said “almost 30% of all” cocaine is exported from the Andean country “belongs to the Clan del Golfo”.
A child of a peasant family in northwestern Colombia, Usuga was the leader of far-right paramilitaries fighting left-wing rebels before becoming the leader of a gang of about 1,600 members.
She succeeded his brother, Juan de Dios, also known by the pseudonym “Giovanni”, who was killed in a confrontation with the police in 2021.
In 2017, Otoniel had announced his intention to strike a deal with the government to be brought to justice. Authorities responded by deploying no less than 1,000 soldiers to pursue him into the jungle.
Otoniel’s ouster marks the right-wing president’s most significant success in the fight against organized crime in Colombia in recent years.
During the five decades of the so-called US-backed war on drugs, Colombian authorities have either killed or arrested several drug lords, most notably Pablo Escobar, who was killed in a 1993 crackdown on law enforcement. At the time of his omnipotence, Pablo Escobar had managed to control as much as 80% of the cocaine trade.
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