A man once feared as one of Colombia’s most dangerous drug lords, the elusive boss of a paramilitary group which dominated a swathe of the country, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison in the US after saying he accepted responsibility for his deeds. “I apologize to the governments of the United States and of Colombia and to the victims of the crimes that I have committed,” Dairo Antonio Úsuga, 51, said through a court interpreter. He had pleaded guilty in January to high-level drug trafficking charges, admitting he oversaw the smuggling of tons of US-bound cocaine and acknowledging “there was a lot of violence with the guerrillas and the criminal gangs”. The US agreed not to seek a life sentence in order to get him extradited from Colombia. As part of his plea deal, Úsuga agreed to forfeit $216m. Úsuga, also known as Otoniel, and his lawyers sought to cast him as a product of Colombia’s woes – a man born into remote rural poverty, surrounded by guerrilla warfare, recruited into it at 16 and hardened by decades of losing friends, fellow soldiers and loved ones to violence. But US district judge Dora Irizarry, invoking her own childhood in a South Bronx housing complex that she said was racked with drug dealing and violence, told the kingpin that environment was no excuse. Colombian’s many-sided conflict has involved security forces, leftist guerrillas, rightwing paramilitary groups, narco-traffickers and other bands of criminals. Úsuga allied at points with left- and rightwing combatants and eventually joined the Gulf clan, known as one of Colombia’s most powerful and brutal forces. He was Colombia’s most-wanted kingpin before his arrest in 2021, and he had been under indictment in the US since 2009. The Gulf clan, also known as the Gaitanist Self Defense Forces of Colombia, holds sway in an area rich with smuggling routes for drugs, weapons and migrants. It financed its rule by imposing “taxes” on cocaine produced, stored or transported through its territory. Úsuga ordered killings of perceived enemies – one of whom was tortured, buried alive and beheaded – and terrorized the public at large, prosecutors say. They say the kingpin ordered up a days-long, stay-home-or-die “strike” after his brother was killed in a police raid, and he offered bounties for the lives of police and soldiers. “The damage that this man named Otoniel has caused to our family is unfathomable,” relatives of slain police officer Milton Eliecer Flores Arcila wrote to the court. The widow of John Gelber Rojas Colmenares, a police officer killed in 2017, said Úsuga “took away the chance I had of growing old with the love of my life”.