BOGOTA, Oct 24, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - Colombia's most-wanted drug trafficker
"Otoniel" has been captured, officials said Saturday, a major victory for the
government of the world's top cocaine exporter.

  Dairo Antonio Usuga, who headed the country's largest narco-trafficking
gang known as the Gulf Clan, was captured near one of his main outposts in
Necocli, near the border with Panama.

  Images released by the government showed the 50-year-old Otoniel in
handcuffs and surrounded by soldiers.

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

  Some 500 soldiers backed by 22 helicopters were deployed in the Necocli
municipality to carry out the operation, which left one police officer dead.

  It was "the biggest penetration of the jungle ever seen in the military
history of our country", Duque said.

  Colombia's police chief Jorge Vargas said during a press conference that
authorities carried out "an important satellite operation with agencies of
the United States and the United Kingdom."

  According to police, Otoniel was hiding in the jungle in the Uraba region,
where he is from, and did not use a telephone, relying on couriers to
communicate.

  Fearful of authorities, he "slept there in the rain, never approaching
inhabited areas," Vargas said.

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

  He was indicted in the United States in 2009, and faces extradition
proceedings to the country, where he would appear in the Southern District of
New York federal court.

  The Colombian government blames the group -- financed mainly through drug
trafficking, illegal mining and extortion -- for being one of the main
drivers of the worst bout of nationwide violence since the signing of a peace
pact with FARC guerillas in 2016.

  The Gulf Clan is present in almost 300 municipalities in the country,
according to the independent think tank Indepaz. However, recent government
efforts have seen the organization decimated.

  - Life of violence -

  Although Otoniel announced in 2017 he intended to reach an agreement to
participate with the Colombian justice system, the government responded by
deploying at least 1,000 soldiers to hunt him down.

  He took over the leadership of the Gulf Clan -- previously known as the
Usuga Clan -- from his brother Juan de Dios, who was killed by police in
2012.

  Born to a poor family, Otoniel joined the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), a
Marxist guerrilla group that demobilized in 1991.

  After laying down his arms, he later returned to fighting, joining far-
right paramilitary groups.

  Many of these were demobilized in 2006 at the initiative of former right-
wing president Alvaro Uribe's administration, but Otoniel decided to remain
in the fight.

  Colombia is the world's top provider of cocaine, with the United States as
its principal market, despite half a century of trying to clamp down on the
drug trade.

  In remote areas where there is little government presence, criminal groups
like the Gulf Clan, dissident FARC guerrillas and leftist ELN rebels fight
bloody turf battles to control drug trafficking corridors and illegal mining
operations.