Colombia police kill accused top drug trafficker who escaped jail

Reuters
·2 min read

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Juan Larinson Castro, better known as Matamba, an accused top Colombian drug trafficker who escaped a maximum-security prison in the Andean country earlier this year, was killed in a police operation to try and recapture him on Thursday, the government said.

Matamba was an important member of Colombia's leading drug-trafficking gang, the Clan del Golfo, and was accused of being allied with Mexican cartels and of shipping tonnes of cocaine to the United States.

Though captured during his birthday celebrations in May 2021 in the city of Bucaramanga, capital of Colombia's Santander province, Matamba later fled a maximum-security prison in the capital Bogota last March while dressed as a prison guard, according to police.

Matamba, 41, had connections with FARC dissidents who reject a 2016 peace deal with the government. A court in Florida sought his extradition to the United States.

The accused drug trafficker was killed in Santander province just weeks after Dairo Antonio Usuga, the Clan del Golfo's top leader better known as Otoniel, was extradited to the United States to face drug trafficking charges.

Matamba held alliances with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Mexican cartels who, according to security sources, send high-caliber arms to Colombia in payment for cocaine shipments, which rival gangs use to fight for control of areas key to drug trafficking.

Those cartels are also working more closely with cocaine producers, the sources say, pushing crops of more productive coca plants, from which cocaine is derived, and paying coca growers upfront.

Despite years fighting a war on drugs, Colombia continues to be a major cocaine producer and faces constant pressure from the United States to reduce coca crop sizes and cocaine output.

Sales of the drug help finance illegal armed groups in Colombia amid a long-running internal conflict that has left at some 260,000 people dead and displaced millions more.

(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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