Otoniel, the biggest Colombian drug lord since Pablo Escobar, pleads guilty
DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — A Colombian man who was once one of the world’s most-wanted drug lords pleaded guilty Wednesday to U.S. smuggling charges, admitting that he led a cartel and paramilitary group that trafficked in cocaine and deadly violence.
“Tons of cocaine were moved with my permission or at my direction,” Dairo Antonio Úsuga, better known as Otoniel, told a Brooklyn federal court.
“There was a lot of violence with the guerillas and the criminal gangs,” he added, and acknowledged that “in military work, homicides were committed.”