Colombian drug trafficker "Don Mario" pleads guilty in New York

Colombian drug trafficker Daniel Rendon Herrera, known as "Don Mario", pleaded guilty on Tuesday, November 2 in New York to drug trafficking and support for a

, a few days after the arrest in Colombia of another baron of the cocaine, Dairo Antonio Usuga, announced the American justice.

In federal court in Brooklyn, Daniel Rendon Herrera, also a former paramilitary militia leader,

,

announced in a statement the prosecutor's office.

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"By his own admission,

(he)

to the United States, said prosecutor Damian Williams, according to whom Daniel Rendon Herrera

.

He faces life imprisonment, 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's guilty plea leaves footprints for other drug lords to follow.

"

Ray Donovan, DEA Special Agent (Drug Enforcement)

“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 American justice 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 had 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.

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"The plea guilty of Don Mario leaves imprints that other drug lords can follow"

, said in the press release of justice, the special agent of the DEA (fight against drugs) Ray Donovan.