Interpol tests resilience of American drug cartels

Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports

Recent successes in bursting powerful and dreadful drug trafficking rings in South America appears to signal a new verve in the concerted efforts of northern American and European countries to block the notorious Mexican narcotic route that forms the confluence of channels that connect African drug trafficking tracks.

The Oracle Today reports that records at the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) show that most of the nabbed narcotic peddlers at the country’s ports of departure were travelling to the Southern American countries en route Mexico and the United States.

Some of the most resonating American countries in the narcotic chain include Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica and majority of the Caribbean Island states.

Just last week, the Colombian authorities captured the leader of the most dreaded drug trafficking cartel lord, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, better known as Otoniel.

Government sources reported that Otoniel who remained the country’s most wanted drug trafficking kingpin was nabbed with intelligence support from Britain and United States which form the prime destinations for narcotics shipped from the south American states where drug cartels contend strongly with government forces.

The report of Otoniel’s capture coincided with renewed legal contest by the lawyers of jailed Mexican drug king, El Chapo, for his sentence to the reversed on the grounds of poor jail conditions and allegations of bias by jurors.

At the back of observers’ mind lurks the memory of Escobar, the legendary drug megastar whose capture and incarceration continue to challenge and test the United State’s jail security systems.

Until his capture Otoniel had remained elusive in his jungle paradise where he is said to have led the life of a caveman lord, sleeping on austere beds and feasting on jungle beasts while controlling billions of illicit dollars.

President Iván Duque of Colombia declared that Otoniel is accused of sending dozens of shipments of cocaine to the United States. He also said Otoniel killed police officers, recruited minors and sexually abused children, among other crimes.

The U.S. government had put up a reward of $5 million for help locating Otoniel after he was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2009 on narcotics import charges and for allegedly providing assistance to a far-right paramilitary group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Later indictments in Brooklyn and Florida accused him of international cocaine distribution dating back as far as 2002, conspiracy to murder rival drug traffickers and drug-related firearms offenses.

In its reward notice, the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs said Úsuga’s (Otoniel’s) criminal network used violence and intimidation to control narcotics trafficking routes, cocaine processing laboratories, speedboat departure points and clandestine landing strips.

President Duque said there are extradition orders against Úsuga, and authorities will work to carry out those orders while “learning all of the truth about the rest of his crimes in our country.”

Otoniel had evaded capture for years by moving between safe locations in the remote jungle region. Director of Colombia’s national police, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, said the billionaire drug barron slept in rough conditions, hardly ever spending time in homes, and dined on his favorite jungle animals.

He set up operations in the strategic Gulf of Uraba region in northern Colombia, a major drug corridor surrounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Caribbean sea on the other. He moved around with eight rings of bodyguards.

However, years of intelligence work, with assistance from the United States and United Kingdom, eventually led Colombian special forces soldiers to his jungle hideout, Vargas said.

The 50 year former left-wing guerrilla and later a paramilitary fighter who had remained the most-wanted drug lord in Colombia is accused of heading the notorious Gulf Clan trafficking group which dominates major cocaine smuggling routes through thick jungles in the country’s restive north.

In celebrating the capture of the mystique villain, President Duque describe Otoniel as the most feared drug trafficker in the world, killer of police, of soldiers, of social leaders, and recruiter of children. He likened Otoniel’s arrest to the capture of Pablo Escobar three decades ago.

Pablo Escobar, the billionaire drug baron, known as “the Godfather,” once sat on top of the drug world in the 1990s with tentacles reaching around the globe. Escobar revolutionized cocaine trafficking in the 1970s and 1980s, pioneering large-scale shipments first to the United States, then to Europe.

In a similar case, a lawyer for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman who is serving  jail terms in the United States is working on a fresh argument seeking to overturn his client’s conviction; pointing at alleged misconduct by a juror and citing deplorable jail conditions.

Marc Fernich reportedly told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Guzman’s trial judge in Brooklyn should have inquired into whether jurors improperly followed the case in the media during the blockbuster trial.

The lawyer also protested Guzman’s two and half years of solitary confinement in Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, describing the facility as modern dungeon. The said facility, according to our findings, has since been shut down by the US authorities.

The Oracle Today reports that 64 year old El Chapo led Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and was sentenced to life jail in February 2019 for trafficking billions of dollars of drugs and conspiring to murder enemies. he also forfeits princely $12.7 billion of N6.4 trillion.

Meanwhile, El Chapo currently serves out his jail term in Colorado’s Supermax, the most secure federal prison.

Guzman had twice escaped maximum-security prisons in Mexico, once while hidden in a laundry cart and once by crawling through a tunnel dug into his cell, before being recaptured in a bloody gun fight in 2016.

His wife, former beauty queen Emma Coronel Aispuro, 32, pleaded guilty in June to helping run his drug empire. She could face a decade in prison at her Nov. 30 sentencing.

Authorities have also maintained tracks on illicit wealth earned from illegal goods and services in Australia, Europe and United States. The funds, according to our sources, are currently being laundered with digital currencies.

Our survey gathered that International police including the FBI-led Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) and Europol busted a group of 150 alleged darknet drug traffickers and seized $4.9 million in cryptocurrencies.

The operation termed Dark HunTor resulted in the seizure of over $31.6 million in both cash and virtual currencies, approximately 234 kilograms of drugs worldwide and 45 firearms.

The U.S.-Italian operations seized €3.6 million (US$4.17 million) in cryptocurrencies, while police seized approximately $1 million in drug proceeds that included $700,000 in cryptocurrency.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports darknet vendor accounts were linked to individuals selling illicit goods on active marketplaces, as well as inactive darknet marketplaces such as Dream, WallStreet, White House, DeepSea and Dark Market.

“Criminal darknet markets exist so drug dealers can profit at the expense of others’ safety. The FBI is committed to working with our JCODE and Europol law enforcement partners to disrupt those markets and the borderless, worldwide trade in illicit drugs they enable,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement.

It is not clear whether the cartels involved in the darknet markets originate from South America where cartel violence particularly in Mexico has forced people to flee their homes, forfeiting hundreds ghost towns to feuding cartels as they flock with other migrants pushing their way into the United States.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center in Mexico reported 9,700 new displacements due to conflict in 2020, bringing the total count of people displaced within Mexico to 357,000 people as of last December.

Another 24,000 displaced migrants, most from Michoacán, are expected to go to Tijuana to pursue asylum in the United States, a local news outlet, Border Report stated.

Senior security analyst for the International Crisis Group responsible for conducting research on the country’s lethal conflict, Falko Ernst, said “Criminal groups have moved toward deep territorial penetration. They’re seeking to control not only the land but also populations.”

In the Tierra Caliente (Hot Land) region of Michoacán, one of the most hazardous and forgotten places in the country, conflict between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Los Viagras drug cartel, and armed self-defense groups has led to countless deaths, thousands of internally displaced people, and growing numbers of people seeking to flee across the U.S. border.

The U.S. State Department has issued a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of its leader of the CJNG, Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho.”

The group is described as the bloodiest and most powerful drug cartel in Mexico.

It is becoming clear that the migrant crisis haunting the United States and Canada might be closely linked to displacements inflicted by drug cartels that feud over territories they consider crucial to international drug distribution channels. Dismantling these cartels might take more than arresting their leaders. The chain of command, according to investigations, is long and strong.