Dairo Antonio Usuga, also known as Otoniel, Colombia’s most notorious drug trafficker, has been apprehended by security forces in a rural section of the Uraba region on Saturday.
Here are seven facts about the world’s most wanted drug trafficker:
- Dairo Antonio Usuga was born in Necocli, Colombia, on September 15, 1971.was the seventh of nine children born into a family that relied on the sale of cattle, pigs, and poultry to make ends meet.
- Otoniel joined the Popular Liberation Army, a Marxist guerrilla group that disbanded in 1991, when he was 18 years old.
- He succeeded his brother Juan de Dios, who was killed by police in 2012, as the leader of the drug trafficking organization Gulf Clan, formerly known as the Usuga Clan.
- According to Jose Angel Mendoza, the chief of Colombia’s anti-narcotics division, Otoniel “became leader by inspiring fear, and it is out of fear that he is respected.”
- Colombian President Ivan Duque compared Otoniel’s detention to that of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord assassinated by Colombian police in 1993.
- The Colombian government has placed an 800,000 dollar prize on his head with the US offering five million dollars.