2023-08-26 04:57:21
The former top commander of the Clan del Golfo Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias Otoniel, will continue to turn on the fan from US soil.
As it became known this Friday, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, JEP, summoned him to testify in two of the key macro-cases of that transitional justice: those of the extermination of the Patriotic Union and extrajudicial executions presented as killed in combat, better known as false positives.
The announcement comes several months after Úsuga was trying to be accepted into the JEP and a few days after the US justice system read his sentence for drug trafficking.
His sentence was read by Judge Dora Irizarry, of the Eastern District Court of New York, on August 8 and set a sentence of 45 years in prison in the US, exactly the same amount that the Prosecutor’s Office had requested.
“It is necessary to decree this testimony, taking into account that, although Mr. Úsuga David was previously heard by magistrate Alejandro Ramelli Arteaga in the framework of the investigation of case 03, it was not possible to exhaust all the issues on which the aforementioned witness can contribute, among other things because he was extradited”, justified the JEP through a statement.
The ex-drug trafficker will testify from one of the most secure prisons in the world
But, despite the fact that he is summoned by the Colombian justice, the ex-capo is expected to testify from his cell in the Brooklyn Jail, one of the most secure and feared in that country.
According to multiple reports from that prison, the inmates spend 23 hours a day in their cells, incommunicado with the rest of the inmates and unable to speak to any member of their family.
In fact, Úsuga’s defense is trying to get the Special Administrative Measures – better known as SAM – that are applied only to the most dangerous criminals in the world to be withdrawn.
Among the restrictions included in the SAM are intensive monitoring and isolation of prisoners who had already been ordered to solitary confinement. That, in practical terms, means that prisoners like Otoniel can go whole days without even seeing another person. They cannot talk to anyone and are even watched while they talk with their lawyers through thick security glass and a telephone on both sides.
All this with the aim that Úsuga, or any other criminal sheltered with the SAM, cannot resume the command line of the armed group to which he belonged or plan his escape. “SAM were implemented after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and seek to prevent any threat to the security of the United States,” reads the website of the State Department of that country.
Such measures are so extreme, that by 2017 there were only 57 prisoners in the entire United States under surveillance under that regime.
For now, the US judge has not decided whether to withdraw them or not. However, the Government of Joe Biden issued a concept in which it requests that the Special Measures be maintained, taking into account that Otoniel was one of the most dangerous criminals in Colombia and that he sent thousands of kilos of cocaine to the United States.
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