The chief of a outstanding Colombian prison group pleaded responsible on Wednesday to U.S. drug trafficking prices, court docket information confirmed.
Dairo Antonio Usuga David, higher often called Otoniel, admitted in Brooklyn federal court docket to at least one rely of operating a seamless prison enterprise, in addition to two counts of drug distribution stemming from federal indictments in Manhattan and Miami that have been transferred to Brooklyn.
Usuga, 51, had been arrested by Colombian armed forces in October 2021 close to the South American nation’s border with Panama on U.S. prices of smuggling “outrageous” quantities of cocaine to the United States whereas main the Clan del Golfo cartel.
“With today’s guilty plea, the bloody reign of the most violent and significant Colombian narcotics trafficker since Pablo Escobar is over,” Breon Peace, the highest federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, mentioned in a press release.
Usuga faces a compulsory minimal jail time period of 20 years. Prosecutors agreed when looking for his extradition from Colombia to not search a life sentence, court docket papers present.
“Mr. Usuga David pleaded guilty because he wants to accept responsibility as quickly as possible for his crimes,” his lawyer Alexei Schacht mentioned in an e mail. “He hopes that his plea and prior calls for peace may help to make Colombia a more peaceful place.”
U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry, who oversees the case, has not but set a sentencing date. Usuga has been detained in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since May.
Extradition to the United States is amongst Bogota’s foremost weapons to combat drug trafficking.
