Colombian drug trafficker Daniel Rendon Herrera, known as “Don Mario”, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in New York to drug trafficking and support for a “terrorist organization”, a few days after the arrest in Colombia of another cocaine lord, Dairo Antonio Usuga, announced the American justice.
In federal court in Brooklyn, Daniel Rendon Herrera, also a former paramilitary militia leader, “pleaded guilty to participating in a criminal enterprise and criminal conspiracy aimed at providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization,” announced in a statement the prosecutor’s office.
“By his own admission, (he) was the head of a brutal and deadly drug-terrorist organization in Colombia, and he smuggled over 80 tonnes of cocaine” to the United States, said prosecutor Damian Williams, according to whom Daniel Rendon Herrera “supervised the operations of a paramilitary cartel which carried out kidnappings, torture and murder.”
He faces up to life in prison, as well as a confiscation of more than $ 45 million and a fine of up to $ 2.25 million, the same source added.
“Don Mario” had been one of the commanders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), far-right militias formed in the 1990s to fight against the Marxist rebellion of the FARC and demobilized between 2003 and 2006.
He is also considered by the American justice system as one of the former leaders of the drug cartel Clan Usuga, resulting from the AUC, then known under the name of “Los Urabenos” or Clan del Golfo, before his arrest in the Colombian jungle in 2009. He was extradited to the United States in 2019.
At the end of October, the last leader of the Clan del Golfo Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias “Otoniel”, was arrested in Colombia. He had been Daniel Rendon Herrera’s ally in the AUC in the 2000s and could also be extradited to the United States.
“The plea guilty of Don Mario leaves footprints that other drug lords can follow,” said in the press release, the special agent of the DEA (drug control) Ray Donovan.
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