By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The leader of a prominent Colombian criminal group was sentenced on Tuesday to 45 years in prison after pleading guilty to U.S. drug trafficking charges.
U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry announced the sentence for Dairo Antonio Usuga David, better known as Otoniel, at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.
Prosecutors have called Otoniel, 51, who led the Clan del Golfo cartel, the most violent Colombian trafficker since Pablo Escobar.
They requested a 45-year sentence for Otoniel, saying he led a “terrorist and paramilitary organization” for nearly two decades and passed over a chance to demobilize through a Colombian government-led peace process.
“He ordered the killing, kidnapping, and torture of rivals, as well as individuals he believed were cooperating with law enforcement,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said in court papers. “The defendant’s desire for control and revenge simply cannot be overstated.”
Lawyers for Otoniel requested a prison term of no more than 25 years, saying he grew up poor and was forced to fight as a child soldier in Colombia’s 60-year conflict among leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, criminal groups and the government. They also said he had accepted responsibility.
Otoniel faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years.
Clan del Golfo, or Gulf Clan, has more than 1,000 armed men, primarily former members of right-wing paramilitary groups.
Otoniel became its leader following stints as a left-wing guerrilla and later as a paramilitary.
Colombian armed forces arrested him near the country’s border with Panama in October 2021.
The country extradited him to the United States the following May, on the condition that he not receive a life sentence. Otoniel pleaded guilty in January.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
