‘Biggest blow to cocaine trade since fall of Escobar’
Colombia’s most notorious drug lord has been captured after more than a decade on the run, dealing a major blow to the rampant cocaine trade.
Dairo Antonio Usuga, 50, who is known as ‘‘Otoniel’’, led the country’s largest narco-trafficking gang, the Gulf Clan.
He was captured near one of his main outposts in Necocli, near the border with Panama.
One police officer died during the arrest in an operation which involved 500 soldiers and 22 helicopters.
Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque, compared Usuga’s arrest to that of another feared narcotics kingpin, Pablo Escobar, three decades ago.
‘‘This is the hardest strike to drug trafficking in our country this century,’’ he said.
The operation was ‘‘the biggest penetration of the jungle ever seen in the military history of our country’’, he added.
Duque had been under pressure to match his tough law-and-order rhetoric with action at a time of soaring cocaine production.
According to a White House report, the amount of land dedicated to the production of coca – cocaine’s raw ingredient – increased by 16 per cent last year, reaching levels unseen for two decades.
Usuga’s capture brought an end to a career in which he aligned himself to both left and right-wing guerrilla groups.
The drug lord was spotted trying to hide underneath a heap of branches. He surrendered without a struggle.
His hideout, ringed by eight layers of security, was found with help from intelligence provided by Britain and the United States. Usuga had been on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted fugitives list for more than a decade with a US$5 million (NZ$7 million) bounty on his head, having been indicted in a Manhattan federal court in 2009 on drug charges.
Further indictments in Brooklyn and Miami alleged he had imported at least 73 tonnes of cocaine between 2003 and 2014 via Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Honduras.
He was found hiding in the jungle where he had tried to avoid detection by using couriers rather than the phone to communicate with members of his cartel.
Colombia’s police chief, Jorge Vargas, told a press conference that Usuga, fearful of capture, slept in the open and avoided inhabited areas.
The Colombian authorities released a picture of a handcuffed Usuga surrounded by soldiers.