(Bogota) Colombian President Ivan Duque on Friday signed the order for the extradition to the United States of drug baron “Otoniel”, which should take place within “about 10 working days”.
Posted at 3:50 p.m.
“Today the extradition has been signed, the legal procedures must now be followed, but what is certain is that this criminal will be extradited”, declared President Duque after the signing of the extradition order of the powerful leader of the Clan del Golfo.
Colombian justice on Wednesday validated the extradition of Otoniel, currently imprisoned in Bogota and prosecuted for drug trafficking since 2009 in a New York court.
Mr. Duque estimated at “about 10 working days” the delay for the surrender to American justice, even if the government must still consider a final appeal from Otoniel’s defense.
The Head of State also indicated that “once (Otoniel) has served his sentence for drug trafficking, he will have to return to Colombia to serve the sentences for the crimes he also committed in our country”. .
Colombian justice accuses the drug trafficker of homicides, terrorism, forced recruitment of minors and kidnappings.
Colombia’s most wanted drug trafficker, Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias Otoniel, 50, was arrested on October 23 in the northwest of the country during a large military operation.
Coming from a peasant family in the northwest of Colombia, Dairo Antonio Usuga was a left-wing guerrilla then a right-wing paramilitary before taking the head of a drug trafficking organization of about 1,600 men, which exported to average nearly 300 tonnes of cocaine each year to around 30 countries, according to the authorities.
He succeeded at the head of the Clan del Golfo to his brother, Juan de Dios known as “Giovanni”, killed by the police in 2012.
In five decades of a US-backed war on drugs, Colombia has killed or captured several drug lords, including Pablo Escobar, shot dead by law enforcement in 1993.
But the country remains the world’s largest producer of cocaine and the United States the main market, while violence linked to trafficking continues.