Colombia’s most wanted drug lord captured

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA >> Colombian security forces have captured the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, a rural warlord who stayed on the run for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right.

President Iván Duque likened the arrest Saturday of Dairo Antonio Úsuga to the capture three decades ago of Pablo Escobar.

Colombia’s military presented Úsuga to the media in handcuffs and wearing rubber boots preferred by rural farmers.

Úsuga, better known by his alias Otoniel, is the alleged head of the muchfeared Gulf Clan, whose army of assassins has terrorized much of northern Colombia to gain control of major cocaine smuggling routes through thick jungles north to Central America and onto the U.S.

He long has been a fixture on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most wanted fugitives list, for whose capture it had been offering a $5 million reward.

He first was indicted in 2009 in Manhattan federal court on narcotics charges and for allegedly providing assistance to a far-right paramilitary group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Later indictments in Brooklyn and Miami federal courts accused him of importing into the U.S. at least 73 metric tons of cocaine from 2003 to 2014 through countries including Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Honduras.

But like many of his gunmen, he also has cycled through the ranks of several guerrilla groups, most recently claiming to lead the Gaitanist Self Defense Forces of Colombia, after a mid-20th-century Colombian leftist firebrand.

Authorities said intelligence provided by the U.S. and U.K. led more than 500 soldiers and members of Colombia’s special forces to Úsuga’s jungle hideout, which was protected by an eight rings of security.

Úsuga for years flew under the radar of authorities by eschewing the high profile of Colombia’s betterknown narcos.