Notorious alleged head of drug clan extradited to U.S.
BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia extradited the alleged head of the feared Gulf Clan, who had been the country’s most wanted drug lord before his capture, to the United States where he faces indictments in three federal courts.
Colombian President Ivan Duque said Dairo Antonio Usuga is “comparable only to Pablo Escobar,” referring to the late former head of the Medellin drug cartel.
“He is not only the most dangerous drug trafficker in the world, but he is murderer of social leaders, abuser of boys, girls and adolescents, a murderer of policemen,” Duque said, accompanied by Colombia’s military leaders whom he congratulated for guarding Usuga and capturing him in October 2021.
The former rural warlord, better known by his alias Otoniel, had stayed on the run for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right. He was transferred Wednesday in handcuffs and wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest from a prison in Bogota to a heavily guarded military transport air field.
He’s long been a fixture on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted list. He was first 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 between 2003 and 2014 through countries including Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Honduras.
Usuga also cycled through the ranks of several guerrilla groups, most recently claiming to lead the Gaitanist Self Defense Forces of Colombia, named after a mid-20th century Colombian leftist firebrand.
The Colombian government began the capo’s extradition after the State Council lifted a provisional suspension of an order by Duque endorsing the move. The high court dismissed a petition from a group of Usuga’s victims who argued that his extradition would violate their rights to justice and reparation. They wanted him to first face the more than 128 proceedings against him in Colombia.
Duque said that from the United States, Usuga would continue collaborating with the Colombian authorities in the investigations against him and once he completes his sentences for drug trafficking, he will return to “Colombia to pay for the crimes he committed.”
The Gulf Clan’s army of assassins terrorized much of northern Colombia to gain control of major cocaine smuggling routes through thick jungles north to Central America and onto the United States.