In a turn to the attitude maintained since his arrival in the United States last year, the drug lord Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, aka Othnielpleaded guilty this Wednesday before the justice of that country, on charges of cocaine trafficking.
Dressed in a short-sleeved blue shirt, the prison uniform, Otoniel, 51, declared before Judge Dora Irizarry, guilty of three counts: continued criminal enterprise, conspiring to manufacture and distribute cocaine, as well as a maritime conspiracy for drug trafficking, of which he was accused by a Florida Court.
(You can read: The sentence that the US requests against Fabio Simón Younes, former partner of ‘Santrich’)
The Prosecutor’s Office warned that the sum of the sentences could lead him to spend the rest of his days in prison if the judge does not take into account when issuing the ruling the fact that he has recognized his guilt, thus avoiding a long and costly trial.
Likewise, he will have to spend five years on probation once the sentence is completed, and he agreed to pay 216 million dollars (close to one billion Colombian pesos) in addition to fines that could reach 22 million dollars.
(We leave you: The harsh sentence that the US requests for Armando Gómez, former partner of ‘Jesús Santrich’)
At the end of the hearing, ‘Otoniel’ read a statement in which acknowledged having sent 96,800 kilos of cocaine to the United States through Central America and Mexico.
Alias Otoniel was extradited to the United States.
Otoniel joined the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá in 1997, and in 2008 the paramilitary group the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Agc), then led by Daniel Rendón Herrera, aka Don Marioan organization that is now known as ‘gulf clan’. He was in charge of it from 2009 until October 2021, when he was arrested.
After acknowledging that in the “military work homicides were committed“, he also maintained that his group “gave security to laboratories and drug traffickers and collected taxes” for the cocaine that was processed and transited through the territories they controlled.
“The AGC charged a fixed rate for each kilo that was manufactured or transported through the areas controlled by the group,” he acknowledged.
(We leave you: The son of one of the ELN negotiators fell on a farm in Codazzi)
This guilty plea avoids a trial, whose date was yet to be determined. He also agrees not to appeal the future ruling. In other cases, a guilty plea has softened the sentences. This in exchange for collaborating with justice to provide valuable information about possible people linked to the business.
According to independent estimates, the ‘Otoniel’ band has some 3,000 members between combatants and collaborators. According to the DEA, the US anti-drug agency, the “Gulf clan” collaborated with Mexican cartels from Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación to introduce drugs into the United States.
Colombian justice also accuses alias Otoniel of homicide, terrorism, recruitment of minorskidnapping and sexual crimes, among other crimes he committed when he was a guerrilla and paramilitary, before becoming the most wanted drug trafficker in Colombia.
Before being sent to the North American country, the victims had requested the “stay” of extraditionalleging their right to know the truth and to be repaired.
Justice Drafting
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