How drug lord Otoniel took Pablo Escobar’s bloody crown by killing villagers with chainsaws & ‘using heads as footballs’
ARMING his men with chainsaws and using victims’ heads “like footballs”, his thirst for blood even outshone his infamous predecessor.
Bu Otoniel, the ruthless Colombian drug lord touted as the successor to Pablo Escobar, has now finally been caged after a breathless manhunt that stretched over a decade.
The 51-year-old – whose real name is Dairo Antonio Usuga – was arrested in 2021 and extradited last year to face drug trafficking charges in the US, before being sentenced to 45 years behind bars this week.
A new documentary tells how his men chopped off the limbs and heads of innocent villagers suspected of supporting a rival organisation.
When his brother Giovanni was shot dead by the authorities, Usuga responded by offering to pay $1,000 for every police officer that was killed.
Otoniel’s fearsome Gulf Clan firebombed trucks and buses and shot at any citizen who dared to come out onto the streets as he wreaked revenge.
The US authorities offered a $5million reward for his capture and more than 1,200 troops and police were involved in the manhunt.
Hundreds of security forces are believed to have been killed by his Gulf Clan, including the 17 police officers who died when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed searching for the boss in 2015.
Otoniel eluded elite forces and a team of international secret agents by travelling through the northern mountains on the back of a donkey and not using a mobile phone.
Finally in October 2021, in an operation that needed 22 helicopters and a force of 500, he was captured during a shoot out.
Afterwards Colombia’s then president Ivan Duque said: “This criminal is only comparable to Pablo Escobar – he is not only the most dangerous drug trafficker in the world but also a murderer of social leaders, an abuser of children and adolescents, a murderer of police officers, and one of the most dangerous criminals on the planet.”
Anyone who watches the second episode of the National Geographic series Drug Lords: The Takedown will see that is not an overstatement.
The episode, titled The Animal, tells how a peasant rose to be the South American nation’s most feared kingpin.
Rise of the ‘Animal’
Bloody drug baron Daniel Barrera, known as El Loco, described Otoniel as an “animal” after being arrested in 2012.
Born in Necoclí on the north coast, not far from the border with Panama, Otoniel joined the left wing Popular Liberation Army guerilla group at the age of 18.
But he had little interest in the politics of the organisation and later switched sides to the right-wing United Self-Defences of Colombia – AUC.
This pro-government group was supposed to be waging war against the Marxist terror organisation called FARC.
In reality AUC and FARC were killing each other and innocent civilians in a bid to control the cocaine trade.
It is estimated that 70 per cent of the world’s supply of the highly addictive drug comes from Colombia.
The AUC terrorised any village suspected of being sympathetic to their enemies.
In 1997 Otoniel and his brother were part of a team that spent five days killing 49 people in Mapiripán.
Villager Viviana tells the film: “They took my father. They killed them with chainsaws. A man had his head cut off, they say they played soccer with it.”
It was one of the darkest moments in the country’s history, but the Usuga brothers went free when the AUC signed a peace deal with the government in 2006.
Gulf Clan
Those demobilised forces splintered into 30 criminal gangs, with Otoniel and Giovanni joining the Gulf Clan.
Giovanni took control of the powerful mob, providing the brains, while Otoniel was the brawn.
They made money from human trafficking, smuggling cocaine and child abuse.
In 2010 the US authorities made the Gulf Clan a prime target, but one anti-drugs expert says they were very hard to pin down.
Hank Crawford, the former head of Britain’s counter narcotics team in Latin America, recalls: “Capturing kingpins is difficult wherever you are in the world.
“The two brothers were extremely hard to take down. They would never spend two nights in the same place.”
Only on New Year’s Eve 2011 was a team of jungle commandos operating at night able to kill Giovanni in a 20-minute firefight.
Peter Vincent, a former attache to the US Department of Justice, didn’t think it was a major problem that Otoniel was not found.
He admits: “We were lulled into a false sense of security with the death of Giovanni.”
Cat and mouse hunt
Otoniel proves to be a far more cunning and deadly foe than his brother.
Towns and villages were shut down, with citizens scared to leave their homes as Otoniel’s men roamed the streets with AK-47 machine guns.
Jay Bergman, the former Andean Regional Director for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, says: “Otoniel is enemy number one.”
Bergman’s agents couldn’t find their man in the mountains, so they decided to arrest his henchmen instead.
But 150 arrests, including Otoniel’s wife Blanca Madrid and 14 other family members, did not bring him out into the open.
It is alleged he had encouraged Blanca to have plastic surgery – and did the same with her three sisters – María, Sandra and Martha – so they all looked the same, reports Semana.
Otoniel is said to have believed that black magic would protect him.
But it was his ailing health that led to his downfall.
He needed a type of medication to treat kidney disease to be delivered and that helped the authorities to find his jungle hideout in Uraba on October 22, 2021.
To be sure, though, teams were sent to various possible locations all at the same time and Navy ships were stationed at sea to prevent him escaping via the water.
Otoniel faced 122 charges in Colombia and was convicted of massacres, murder, disappearances, forced displacement and the recruitment of minors.
He was extradited in May 2022 to the United States.
During his trial in New York in January he admitted having trafficked 97 tons of cocaine to the US.
But the trade in cocaine does not end, with other criminals quickly stepping in to fill the void he left behind.
Wesley Tabor, a former DEA special agent in South America, tells The Sun: “Is this ever going to be over? I don’t think it ever will be, because I don’t think we will ever curb this appetite for cocaine.
“In the 32 years I have been in this business I haven’t just seen these drugs become more plentiful, but also cheaper.”
The National Geographic series Drug Lords: The Takedown continues on Monday August 14.