Accused Colombian drug lord Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, dubbed “the most dangerous drug trafficker in the world,” was extradited to the US to face federal charges for allegedly running a ruthless and violent international cocaine peddling operation, prosecutors said Thursday.

Úsuga David, 50, also known as Otoniel, the suspected leader of Colombia’s feared Clan del Golfo, faces cocaine trafficking and weapons charges, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.

“Murder was meaningless and violence the ulitmate currency” for the accused drug kingpin, US Attorney Breon Peace said as she announced charges against Úsuga David at a press conference.

“He earned enormous profits measured in billions, not millions. He oversaw an army of henchmen who murdered, kidnapped and tortured victims, including Colombia law enforcement and military personnel,” Peace told reporters.

The accused kingpin pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Thursday afternoon and was ordered detained pending trial.

As head of the operation, Úsuga David allegedly retained power by ruling like a murderous dictator who ordered assassinations and the torture of rivals he believed were working against him. 

During his reign, he ordered the killings of multiple people who worked for a rival drug operation run by trafficker Daniel Barrera Barrera, the feds said in a detention memo filed Thursday. 

When Úsuga David got word that one of his own people was providing information to Barrera, he ordered his henchmen to make an example out of the alleged traitor, the feds charged. 

“That individual was subsequently tortured, buried alive, and beheaded post-mortem,” the memo states. 

Members of the operation also attempted to poison with cyanide someone imprisoned overseas who they believed to be cooperating with law enforcement, according to the feds. They also tried to assassinate his attorney. 

After his brother was killed in a police raid in 2012, Clan del Golfo ordered a lockdown of towns in their control, shuttering businesses and keeping residents in their homes. 

Úsuga David ordered his sicarios to execute the civilians who disobeyed, the feds wrote. 

After spending more than a decade on the run, Úsuga David was captured by 500 Colombian soldiers last October in what is believed by some to be the biggest blow to drug trafficking in Columbia since the killing of infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1993.

Colombian authorities have said Úsuga David trafficked between 180 and 200 tons of cocaine a year with the Clan del Golfo and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of members of the South American country’s security forces.

On Thursday, Peace said, at its peak, the Clan del Golfo was a 6,000-person strong operation that continues to be one of the largest cocaine distributing outfits in the world. 

Úsuga David faces three criminal charges in the United States including conspiring to manufacture and distribute cocaine.

Daniel Rendon Herrera, an Úsuga David associate known as Don Mario, pleaded guilty in a federal court last November to charges of shipping cocaine to US territory and buying weapons for paramilitary figures he commanded. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Colombian President Ivan Duque on Wednesday said Úsuga David’s extradition “shows nobody is above the Colombian state.”

Duque went on to say of Úsuga David that “he is not only the most dangerous drug trafficker in the world, but he is murderer of social leaders, abuser of boys, girls and adolescents, a murderer of policemen.”

The former rural warlord had stayed one step ahead of Colombia’s military for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right. He was transferred Wednesday in handcuffs and wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest from a prison in Bogotá to a heavily guarded military transport air field en route to the US.

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.

Later indictments in Brooklyn and Miami federal courts accused him of importing into the U.S. at least 73 metric tons of cocaine between 2003 and 2014 through countries including Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Honduras.

Úsuga David’s also cycled through the ranks of several guerrilla groups, most recently claiming to lead the Gaitanist Self Defense Forces of Colombia.

Duque said that from the United States, Úsuga would continue collaborating with the Colombian authorities in the investigations against him and once he completes his sentences for drug trafficking, he will return to “Colombia to pay for the crimes he committed.”

The Clan del Golfo’s army of assassins 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.

As he defied authorities for years, his legend as a bandit grew alongside the horror stories told by Colombian authorities of the many underage women he and his cohorts allegedly abused sexually.

With Post Wires