Colombia's most wanted drug smuggler Ethanol arrested in military operation
Colombia's most wanted drug smuggler and leader of one of the country's biggest criminal gangs has been arrested. Dior Antonio Asuga, popularly known as Ethanol, was arrested Saturday in a joint operation by the Army, Air Force and police.
The government has offered a reward of up to 800,000 for information leading to the capture of Ethanol.
Colombian President Ivan Doc praised Ethanol's arrest in a televised message. According to him, this is a big blow to drug smugglers in our country. The blow can be compared to Pablo Escobar, a mafia boss arrested in the 1990s.
How did the arrest come about?
Etonel has been arrested in a rural hideout in the northeastern Colombian province of Antokia, near the Panama border.
Five hundred soldiers and 22 helicopters took part in the operation, which also killed a police officer.
Etonel used a network of secret hideouts in rural areas to evade authorities and did not use the telephone during this time. They relied on messengers for communication.
According to El Tempo, a local Colombian newspaper, his whereabouts were identified two weeks ago.
Police Chief George Varghese said more than 50 signal intelligence experts had traced his whereabouts via satellite imagery. The United Kingdom and the United States have been involved in the search.
According to the French news agency AFP, Mr Dakio called the operation "the largest military operation in the history of Colombia in the jungle."
The Colombian Armed Forces released a photo after the operation, showing Athenel in handcuffed and detained by soldiers.
In recent years, several major operations have been carried out to arrest the 50-year-old Ethanol, with thousands of officers taking part, but none of them have been successful.
How powerful is Athenol's 'Gulf Clean' group?
Etonel is currently the leader of the Gulf Klein in the drug world. The group was formerly known as Asuga Klein.
Earlier, his brother was the leader of a gang that was killed by police in a raid on a New Air Party ten years ago.
Colombian security forces have described the gang as the most powerful criminal group in the country, while US officials have described it as a highly armed and violent group.
The gang, which operates in several provinces of the country and has large international connections, is involved in crimes such as drug and human trafficking, illegal gold mining and extortion.
The group is believed to include 1,800 armed members, recruited exclusively from far-right paramilitary groups. Various members of the gang have also been arrested in Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Peru and Spain.
The gang has access to several routes from Colombia to the United States and even as far as Russia for drug trafficking.
The Colombian government says it has either killed members of the gang in recent years or forced them to flee to remote rural forests to save their lives.
Etonel is currently facing several charges, including sending cocaine to the United States, killing police officers and recruiting children into his gang.
Ethanol was indicted in 2009 and is now being extradited to a U.S. court, where he may now appear in a New York court.