NEW YORK, (Reuters) – The leader of a prominent Colombian criminal group who pleaded guilty to U.S. drug trafficking charges was sentenced yesterday to 45 years in prison by a judge in Brooklyn who called him “more prolific” than the late kingpin Pablo Escobar.
In sentencing Dairo Antonio Usuga David, better known as Otoniel, U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry called the nearly 100,000 kg (220,500 pounds) of cocaine he shipped to the United States while leading the Clan del Golfo cartel “extraordinary.”
She dismissed a defense claim that prosecutors engaged in “hyperbole” by likening Otoniel, 51, to Escobar, the former Medellin cartel leader who was killed in 1993 in a joint U.S.-Colombia operation.
“There have been many drug dealers who were more prolific than Pablo Escobar, including your client,” Irizarry told Otoniel’s lawyers.
The 45-year sentence had been requested by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.
Otoniel was arrested by Colombian armed forces near the South American country’s border with Panama in October 2021.
He was extradited to the United States in May 2022, and pleaded guilty the following January.
Before being sentenced, Otoniel apologized in court to his victims, and to the U.S. and Colombian governments.
Colombia has for decades been embroiled in a conflict among leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, criminal groups and the government.
“To the people and to the youth of Colombia, I advise them and warn them not to take the path that I have taken,” Otoniel said through a Spanish interpreter.
Lawyers for Otoniel had sought a prison term of no more than 25 years, pointing to his acceptance of responsibility, and to an impoverished childhood when he was forced to fight as a child soldier.
But the judge said “billions” of people had been born into similar situations and did not become cartel leaders.
“I grew up in the projects of the South Bronx,” she said. “I know all too well what it’s like to be raised in that environment where, day to day, people are shooting each other in the street, people are dying in the street.”
Otoniel had 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.
