Tons of cocaine were moved with my permission or at my direction, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, better known as Otoniel, told a Brooklyn federal court.

There was a lot of violence with the guerillas and the criminal gangs, he added, and acknowledged that in military work, homicides were committed.

Úsuga, 51, will face at least 20 years in prison when sentenced, prosecutors said. But the U.S. government agreed not to seek a life sentence in order to secure his extradition from Colombia last year, according to U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry.

As part of his plea deal, he agreed to forfeit $216 million.

Úsuga presided over the Gulf Clan, which terrorized much of northern Colombia to control major cocaine-smuggling routes. U.S. authorities have called him one of the most dangerous drug traffickers on the planet, and he was Colombias most-wantedkingpin.

With todays guilty plea, the bloody reign of the most violent and significant Colombian narcotics trafficker since Pablo Escobar is over, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Defense lawyer Paul Nalven said Úsuga was very remorseful and portrayed him as a child of the cycle of violence that has wracked Colombia throughout his life. Úsuga, who has a fourth-grade education, was dragooned into guerrilla warfare at age 16, the attorney said.

After his arrest, Úsuga asked his cartel to stop attacking police, and hes hoping something fruitful comes of the six-month cease-fire that recently took effect between President Gustavo Petros administration and five armed groups, including the Gulf Clan, in hopes of fostering a lasting peace.

Hed like to see a better Colombia, Nalven said.

The Gulf Clan, also known as the Gaitanist Self Defense Forces of Colombia, has thousands of military-garbed members who battle rival gangs, paramilitary groups, and Colombian authorities in order to keep a bloody hold on its turf near the Panama border, prosecutors said. Cocaine smuggling pays for it all including, Úsuga admitted, through taxes that the group has charged on any cocaine produced, stored or transported through its territory.

Úsuga ordered the killing and torture of perceived enemies, offered bounties for slaying police and soldiers, and directed campaigns to go after them with military-grade weapons, according to prosecutors. He flexed his power by declaring a strike that shut down businesses and forced people to stay home on pain of death for days in the cartels turf, prosecutors said.

Úsuga was named in a series of U.S. indictments going back to 2009. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest, and the Colombian government offered $800,000. Over the years, Colombian authorities arrested or killed hundreds of cartel members, deployed over 1,000 police officers to hunt for the kingpin and publicized the U.S. reward by dropping flyers out of helicopters.

But Úsuga eluded capture until 2021 through a combination of corruption, connections to both left- and right-wing combatants in his countrys internal conflict hed been part of groups on both sides and living off the grid in the countryside. He purportedly used a different safe house every night.

When he was apprehended, former Colombian President Iván Duque said Úsuga was 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.

Úsuga was extradited to the U.S. this past May. He pleaded guilty Wednesday to leading a continuing criminal enterprise and various drug trafficking charges that involve nearly 97,000 kg (107 tons) of cocaine that was ultimately bound for the U.S.

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In a brief filed Wednesday, lawyers for the families accused Boeing of committing the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history.

The family members were never consulted before Boeing cut a deal with the U.S. Justice Department to avoid prosecution on a felony charge of fraud. Up to a dozen or so people from several countries are expected to testify about how the loss of loved ones has affected them.

There will be two main phases to the arraignment: Boeing will enter a plea, and then relatives of the passengers will ask the court to impose conditions on Boeing much as it would on any criminal defendant.

The families said in a filing Wednesday those conditions should include a court-picked monitor to evaluate whether Boeing is creating a culture of safety and ethics as it promised the government and that its steps to do so be made public.

Boeing has faced civil lawsuits, congressional investigations and massive damage to its business since the crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed a combined total of 346 people. Boeing and its top officials have avoided criminal prosecution, however, because of the settlement reached between the company and the government in January 2021.

Boeing was charged with a single count of defrauding the United States to get regulators to approve the Max jet. But the outgoing Trump administrations Justice Department agreed to defer prosecution and drop the charge if Boeing paid $2.5 billion  mostly to airlines, but including a $243.6 million fine and commit no other crimes for three years.

U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor ordered Boeing to be arraigned after finding that the Justice Department violated a victims-rights law by not telling the families about secret negotiations with Boeing. He has not ruled on a separate issue of whether Boeing should lose its immunity from prosecution.

Paul Cassell, a lawyer representing the families, said he hopes Thursdays testimony by relatives will convince the Justice Department to throw out the settlement.

The Biden administrations Justice Department did not oppose an arraignment, but it continues to agree with Boeing that the settlement should stand. In a court filing last November, the department said that without the settlement, the government would lose its ability to ensure that Boeing follows through with reforms designed to prevent future tragedies.

The first Max passenger flight was in 2017. The first crash occurred in October 2018 in Indonesia and was followed by another in March 2019 in Ethiopia.

Before both crashes, an automated flight-control system that Boeing did not initially disclose to airlines and pilots pushed the nose down based on a faulty sensor reading. Boeing blamed two former employees for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about the system, known by its acronym, MCAS.

One of those former employees, a test pilot, is the only person prosecuted in connection with the Max. A jury in Judge OConnors courtroom found him not guilty last year.

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Late on Wednesday, the Twitter CEO said he was not aware of the social media platforms decision to censor links to a BBC documentary critical of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, implying he was stretched in running multiple companies at once.

It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, he tweeted.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, and is also involved in brain computer startup Neuralink. Some of Musks shareholders have grumbled over his simultaneous leadership of multiple companies, with some Tesla investors arguing that his leadership of Twitter hurts Teslas brand and drags down its stock price. 

Tesla shares had a dismal 2022, falling 65% in their biggest-ever annual decline. Yet shares in the electric carmaker have since rebounded, up 33.6% from the start of the year. Tesla reported $24.32 billion of fourth-quarter revenue on Wednesday, beating expectations and up by around a third year-on-year. 

Musk has pushed back against assertions that he cant manage Tesla and Twitter at the same time. On a Twitter space last December, Musk told listeners that he hadnt missed a single important Tesla meeting since becoming CEO of Twitter. And on a call with analysts on Wednesday, Musk described his Twitter feed as an asset, calling it an incredibly powerful tool for driving demand for Tesla.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company reportedly no longer has a communications department. 

Free-speech absolutist

Blocking links to the BBCs documentary, titled India: The Modi Question, is an early test for the new Elon Musk-led Twitter and how it handles social media regulations overseas.

The documentary examines Modis actions during anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002, while he was chief minister of the state. Victims of the riots have accused Modi of tolerating, or even encouraging, the violence. Modi denies the allegations, and the countrys judiciary has declined to prosecute.

Indian officials called the documentary a propaganda piece and anti-India garbage. Officials have clamped down on screenings of the documentary on university campuses, according to the Associated Press. 

The BBC called the documentary rigorously researched in a statement.

Indian officials have ordered social media platforms, like YouTube and Twitter, to take down links to the documentary for Indian audiences, reports The Intercept. (Users outside of India can still access the film.)

In February 2021, India ordered social media companies to designate local executives responsible for complying with government requests to take down content, or to challenge them in court. These officers could face jail time if they did not comply with such orders within 36 hours. In May that same year, Indian law enforcement raided Twitters India offices after the social media platform dubbed a tweet from a member of Indias ruling party manipulated media.

India was the fifth-largest source of removal requests for Twitter, according to the social media companys latest transparency report, which covers June through December 2021, behind Japan, Russia, Turkey and South Korea. Yet India led in terms of removal requests targeted to verified journalists and media outlets, Twitter reported.

The Indian government is formulating new rules that would grant officials more power to deem information fake or false, and bar social media platforms from hosting it.

Elon Musk has called himself a free-speech absolutist. After taking over as Twitters CEO, he has revoked the suspensions of figures like former U.S. president Donald Trump in what he termed a general amnesty.

But at other times, Musk has said that Twitter would follow local law, even if they impinged on speech and content. By free speech, I simply mean that which matches the law, he tweeted in April. He then claimed that if people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

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