Colombia Military Foreces handout via Reuters
More than 50 intelligence experts from the U.S. and U.K. joined 500 soldiers using 22 helicopters in the dramatic arrest of Colombia’s most wanted drug lord Dairo Antonio Úsuga, widely known as Otoniel. The gang leader had a $5 million bounty on his head by the U.S., and the Colombian government offered a reward of $800,000 for tips about his whereabouts. He reportedly moved between safe houses in rural Colombia and used couriers rather than phones to communicate. It is not known if someone tipped off police or if he was captured due to extensive satellite imagery surveillance authorities say they used to track him for the last two weeks. President Iván Duque announced the arrest on national television late Saturday, “This is the biggest blow against drug trafficking in our country this century,” he said. “This blow is only comparable to the fall of Pablo Escobar in the 1990s.” He added that the massive operation was “the biggest penetration of the jungle ever seen in the military history of our country.”