BOGOTA, Colombia—In the next five weeks, Dairo Antonio Usuga, Colombia’s most-wanted drug lord who was captured on Oct. 23, is expected to be extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges filed in New York and Florida, according to Colombian authorities.
As head of the notorious drug cartel Clan del Golfo, Usuga—more commonly known by the alias “Otoniel”—is accused of steering an international criminal enterprise, processing and shipping more than 160 tons of cocaine each year to the United States and Europe, and wielding control over large swaths of Colombian territory, where his men imposed their own laws using terror and violence.
Washington had issued a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Otoniel, who faces two separate indictments in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York—where he is charged with a litany of crimes including support for narcotics trafficking, cocaine distribution and conspiracy to commit murder—and one indictment in the Southern District of Florida for drug trafficking. As Colombian media outlets have reported, guilty verdicts in his crimes could see him sentenced to life behind bars.