Colombia's most wanted drug lord captured in jungle raid

Colombian security forces have captured the country's most wanted drug trafficker, Dairo Antonio Usuga, a rural warlord who evaded a decade-long manhunt by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right.

President Ivan Duque likened the arrest Saturday of Dairo Antonio Usuga to the capture three decades ago of Pablo Escobar.

Images circulating on social media show Usuga handcuffed with his face planted to the ground.

Usuga, better known by his alias Otoniel, is the alleged head of the much-feared Gulf Clan, whose army of assassins has terrorized much of northern Colombia to gain control of major cocaine smuggling routes through thick jungles north to Central America and onto the U.S.

He's long been a fixture on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's most-wanted fugitives list, for whose capture it had been offering a US$5 million reward. He was first indicted in 2009, in Manhattan federal court, on narcotics charges and for allegedly providing assistance to a far-right paramilitary group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.