A U. S. court has sentenced the founder of Colombia’s AGC paramilitary organization to 35 years on charges similar to drug trafficking and terrorism.
The sentencing comes nearly a year after Daniel Herrera, alias “Don Mario,” pleaded guilty to running a corrupt business and supporting terrorism as a member of the now-defunct AUC.
The court’s ruling was celebrated by New York District Attorney Breon Pearce, who claimed Mario was “once Colombia’s most feared narco-terrorist. “
Today marks the end of the criminal career of Rfinishon Herrera, guilty of raising tons of cocaine, fueling violence, perpetuating drug addiction leaving a path of destruction from Colombia to the United States, and stained with the blood of rival drug traffickers and civilians who were tortured. and killed through the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.
Pearce said his workplace “remains committed to cooperation with our foreign partners to dismantle transnational criminal organizations” 30 years after the DEA helped uncover Pablo Escobar’s paramilitary organization “Los Pepes. “
Mario, one of the founding members of this organization, led by the Castaño brothers, originally from the same town as his long-term successor.
The Pepes veteran played a key role in the paramilitary expansion of Colombia’s cocaine industry, first created through the Medellín cartel and its rivals in Cali.
The violence and terrorism used through the Castaño brothers led the U. S. State Department to the Bolivarian Brothers. The U. S. government declared the AUC a foreign terrorist organization in 2001.
Mario founded a dissident faction in 2006 following tensions between paramilitaries and former President Álvaro Uribe that intensified the AUC’s partial demobilization between 2003 and 2006.
This faction would later become Colombia’s largest paramilitary organization and would be called AGC.
However, Mario was arrested in the past in 2009 and extradited to the United States in 2018.
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