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COLOMBIA’S strongest drug lord and one of many United States’ most needed criminals has been captured after greater than ten years on the run.
Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, often called Otoniel, was nabbed by police in an enormous army operation involving 500 troopers backed by 22 helicopters.
The Colombian kingpin was taken alive at his jungle hideout within the northwest area of Antioquia on Saturday.
The 50-year-old has been accused of sending a number of shipments of cocaine to the US in addition to killing law enforcement officials, recruiting schoolchildren, sexually abusing kids and different horrifying crimes.
Otoniel was his drug-plagued nation’s most-wanted trafficker and the chief of its largest prison gang with a feared pressure of 1,800 heavily-armed militia.
UK intelligence providers assisted the swoop US consultants supplied satellite tv for pc monitoring after slapping a £3.6 million ($5million) worth on his head on prime of a £600,000 bounty provided by Colombia.
Otoniel ran the violent Clan Del Golfo cartel which controls main cocaine smuggling routes by means of Colombia’s impenetrable jungles.
The clan’s earlier chief – his brother – was killed by police in a raid on a New Yr’s Eve occasion nearly 10 years in the past.
President Ivan Duque in contrast the arrest to the killing of the ‘King of Cocaine’ Pablo Escobar hailing it because the “the largest penetration of the jungle ever seen within the army historical past of our nation”.
He added: “That is the largest blow in opposition to drug trafficking in our nation this century.
“This blow is just akin to the autumn of Pablo Escobar within the Nineteen Nineties.”
The chief of the Medellin drug cartel was hunted down by police and shot lifeless in 1993.
Otoniel was captured in his rural hideout in Antioquia province in north-western Colombia, near the border with Panama.
One police officer was killed within the meticulously deliberate swoop on his lair, which had been watched for 2 weeks earlier than the sign was given to maneuver in.
Otoniel had consistently moved between protected homes and by no means used a cellphone to keep away from being traced – relying as a substitute on a community of couriers to speak.
However his location on the time of his seize was pinpointed two weeks in the past, El Tiempo newspaper stated.
Colombia’s armed forces later launched a photograph displaying its troopers guarding smirking, black-clad Otoniel, carrying handcuffs and rubber boots.
Different big operations to ensnare the godfather lately have failed.
The gang, which operates in lots of provinces and has intensive worldwide connections, is engaged in drug and folks smuggling, unlawful gold mining and extortion.
Its members had been stated to have been recruited from far-right paramilitary teams with tentacles spreading to Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Peru and Spain.
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