45-Year Sentence for Otoniel, Who Ran a Colombian Drug Cartel

A man described by prosecutors as “the most violent and significant” Colombian drug trafficker since Pablo Escobar was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a judge in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday.

The man, Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, 51, also known as Otoniel, was extradited from Colombia last year and pleaded guilty in January to running the Gulf Clan, a paramilitary group that operates as a huge cartel. The group used extreme violence to control swaths of Colombia and silence rivals and law enforcement officers, prosecutors said.

Francisco J. Navarro, a prosecutor, said during the proceeding that Mr. Úsuga was Colombia’s most dangerous narco-trafficker of the century and called him the “supreme leader” of the Gulf Clan, which he said ruled “violently and without mercy.” He said Mr. Úsuga was responsible for an “uncountable” number of murders. Several Colombian government representatives watched from the gallery.

When Mr. Úsuga was captured by the Colombian military at a remote jungle hide-out in 2021, then-President Iván Duque described him the most feared trafficker in the world and compared his arrest to the fall of Mr. Escobar in the 1990s. The president also declared that the arrest marked “the end of the Gulf Clan.” But new leaders have emerged to take Mr. Úsuga’s place.

The charges in New York and coordinated ones in southern Florida included conspiracy to ship vast quantities of cocaine north by land and sea. Mr. Úsuga’s lawyers said that he had accepted responsibility for his crimes but argued that he had been a child soldier in Colombia’s decades-long civil war.

Before the sentencing, the defendant addressed the court himself, seated in a khaki prison uniform, his graying beard neatly trimmed. Through an interpreter, Mr. Úsuga asked forgiveness and said he had advice for Colombia’s youth: “Not to take the path I have taken.”

He called on the United States to support negotiations toward peace in Colombia with all parties — including drug traffickers.

Judge Dora L. Irizarry rebuked the defense lawyers for their focus on Mr. Úsuga’s upbringing, noting she had grown up in a rough area of public housing in the South Bronx. Instead of overcoming hardship, the judge said, Mr. Úsuga had directed his energy toward rising in an inherently violent industry.

“I see it every day with people who come before me with their lives wasted,” Judge Irizarry said.

As part of Mr. Úsuga’s plea agreement, he agreed to forfeit $216 million. He will be deported and face other charges in Colombia at the end of his sentence.

The Drug Enforcement Administration had investigated Mr. Úsuga for nearly 20 years, its administrator, Anne Milgram, said this year, and he was indicted in New York in 2009. American officials said that his group, strongest in northwestern Colombia, was composed of “former members of terrorist organizations” that controlled drug routes and laboratories.

According to the indictments, Mr. Úsuga ran the cocaine production and shipping pipeline to the United States from 2003 until his capture. In 2012, he became the head of the clan, according to prosecutors.

Today, the group continues to control vast swaths of territory near the border with Panama and on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts and has thousands of members, according to Colombian security forces.

It uses sicarios, or assassins, to carry out killings, torture and kidnapping, the authorities said. Mr. Úsuga offered rewards for killing members of law enforcement, prosecutors said. A bounty was even put on a police dog.

The defendant was also accused of personally ordering the murders of people who worked for a rival trafficker — and the gruesome torture and killing of one of his men who betrayed him.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the senior analyst for Colombia for the International Crisis Group, said that the Gulf Clan had become more powerful since a 2016 peace agreement with the country’s largest leftist insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The vacuum left when FARC laid down arms was not filled by the government, and criminal groups stepped in to control a lucrative illicit economy that includes drug and human trafficking. The Gulf Clan’s territory includes the area near the Darién Gap, the stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama that thousands of migrants use to trek north.

“They took over a lot of the territory that this group had previously controlled, and I think today they’re really at the strongest point they’ve ever been at,” Ms. Dickinson said.

“What we’ve seen since his arrest is this organization has, if anything, grown more cohesive and more aggressive,” she said.

Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, a staff member at Human Rights Watch, said that Mr. Úsuga had begun to participate in tribunals after his arrest — and to name powerful people in government who played a role in his crimes. But at that point, the talks were stopped and he was extradited.

“Extradition has turned into a tool for powerful actors in Colombia to silence people who were finally talking about the horrible things that they did and the individuals who were complicit in their crimes,” she said.

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting.