A notorious Colombian drug lord, Dario Antonio Úsuga David (alias Otoniel), has been sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States thanks to information provided by the Belgian Sky ECC investigation which led to his arrest.
Otoniel is considered the biggest Colombian narcoterrorist since Pablo Escobar and was arrested in October 2021 following Belgium's Sky ECC case. Former Colombian President Ivan Duque called the arrest of Otoniel "the heaviest blow to drug trafficking since the fall of Escobar."
Franky De Keyzer, prosecutor of the public prosecutor's office in Antwerp, told De Standaard that Otoniel's arrest was partly due to Belgium and Operation Sky. Once the encrypted software of messaging service Sky ECC was cracked, investigators were able to intercept a billion messages.
The Belgian authorities shared the information with at least 22 countries, which eventually led to Otoniel's arrest.
Operation Agamemnon
For decades, Otoniel led the Clan del Golfo (formerly Los Urabeños) and made it Colombia's most powerful crime organisation. The gang recruited mainly from former right-wing paramilitaries and is said to have around 6,000 members. Apart from drug trafficking, the clan also engages in illegal mining and extortion and is responsible for numerous murders and deportations, AP News reports.
It was not until 2015 that the Colombian authorities opened the hunt for Otoniel with 'Operation Agamemnon,' which saw more than 1,200 policemen sent to Urabá, a geographical sub-region in Colombia on the border with Panama.
The government also placed the Clan del Golfo on the list of criminal groups that the army was allowed to fight with airstrikes, and offered a reward of €1 million for information that could lead to Otoniel's arrest. The US government, for their part, added another 5 million to that sum.
In turn, Otoniel responded by offering $300 for every police officer who could be eliminated. In one day, the call led to a whole series of assassinations of police officers, resulting in the outbreak of a very bloody narco-war.
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Over time, however, Operation Agamemnon got a better grip on the cartel as numerous of the drug lord's confidants were arrested or killed. In March 2021, even his sister Nini Johana Usaga (alias La Negra), was arrested and extradited to the United States.
After Otoniel's arrest in October of that same year, he pleaded guilty to trafficking tonnes of cocaine and apologised to all the victims in court, but that did not help him get a reduced sentence: he was given 45 years in prison and a $216 million fine, equivalent to about €196 million, the New York Times reports.
"Otoniel led one of the largest cocaine trafficking organisations in the world," the prosecutor said. "He was responsible for exporting huge quantities of cocaine to the United States and ordered the ruthless execution of Colombian law enforcement officers, military officials and civilians."
