CAREPA, Colombia, Oct 25, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - Colombia's government announced
Sunday it is working towards extraditing the country's most-wanted drug
trafficker "Otoniel" to the United States, a day after he was captured in a
major operation in the jungle.

  "There is an extradition order against Otoniel, and this extradition
order... remains in progress," Defense Minister Diego Molano told the daily
El Tiempo newspaper in an interview.

  "This is the path for all those who commit transnational crimes," Molano
told reporters later, adding that nearly 30 percent of the many tons of
cocaine exported from Colombia went through the so-called Gulf Clan, the
country's largest drug trafficking gang, led by Otoniel.

  The 50-year-old drug lord, whose real name is Dairo Antonio Usuga, was
arrested Saturday in northwest Colombia's dense jungle in an operation
involving some 700 uniformed agents backed by 18 helicopters, according to
the army.

  The United States had offered a $5 million bounty for information leading
to the arrest of Otoniel, one of the most feared men in Colombia.

  "This is the hardest strike to drug trafficking in our country this
century," President Ivan Duque said Saturday, adding that the arrest was
"only comparable to the fall of Pablo Escobar," the notorious Colombian
narco-trafficking kingpin.

  "We are going for more, we are going for victory against all high-value
targets," Duque vowed from a military base in the country's northwest.

  The government accuses other armed groups such as the Popular Liberation
Army (EPL), and rebels who walked away from the peace pact signed with the
FARC guerillas in 2016, of financing themselves with drug trafficking
revenue.

  Born to a poor family, Otoniel joined the EPL, a Marxist guerrilla group
that demobilized in 1991. A paramilitary fighter, he ultimately headed the
Gulf Clan, with a force of some 1,600 men and a presence in almost 300
municipalities nationwide, according to the independent think tank Indepaz.

  In Colombia Otoniel had 128 outstanding arrest warrants for drug
trafficking and recruitment of minors, among other crimes.

  "He murdered more than 200 members of the security forces... Many soldiers
have suffered because of this murderer and his friends," Duque said.

  Otoniel also preyed on minors, "intimidating families and extorting them in
order to take their daughters' virginity," the president added.

  In five decades of a US-backed drug war, Colombia has killed or captured
several drug lords, including kingpin Escobar, who was shot by security
forces in 1993.

  But the country remains the world's leading cocaine producer, with the
United States its biggest buyer.