Via Fijatevos/QCostarica
Foreign drug cartels lost tons of narcotics in a week to police here and in Panamanian waters. Local police captured three truck shipments and Panamanian authorities along with U.S. patrols cooperated in another blow.
After a chase that began in Costa Rican waters, a U.S. Coast Guard frigate and Panamanian patrol boat trapped a semi-submersible craft after an unarmed U.S. Orion P-3 patrol aircraft had sighted it. The craft sank, leaving three survivors and one dead.
The semi-submersible craft are sometimes mis-identified as submarines but always navigate with their conning tower out of the water. They can carry up to three tons of narcotics and are nearly impossible to detect by radar.
In this case, the craft inexplicably sank as it attempted to escape and two Hondurans and a Guatemalan crew member escaped. The U.S. frigate picked up the presumed captain’s lifeless body and several packets of drugs.
In Costa Rica, the Siquirres police, acting on a tip from OIJ, captured a truck loaded with 500 kilos (more than 1,000 lbs.) of cocaine, The packets of drugs were concealed in false walls of the truck bed.
Earlier, last Sunday, police confiscated 180 kilos of cocaine in a trailer at the northern border crossing of Peñas Blancas. Unusual for such a capture, police also grabbed 12 kilos of heroin in the cargo trailer.
Only three days before that, police at the border with Nicaragua nabbed another 138 kilos of cocaine in a trailer.
All this action was on the heels of the Nov. 29 capture of a fishing boat carrying more than a ton of cocaine 216 nautical miles off Costa Rica’s Punta Burica in the Pacific Ocean. Four crew members were arrested.Drug Cartels Lose Tons of Drugs
Foreign drug cartels lost tons of narcotics in a week to police here and in Panamanian waters. Local police captured three truck shipments and Panamanian authorities along with U.S. patrols cooperated in another blow.
After a chase that began in Costa Rican waters, a U.S. Coast Guard frigate and Panamanian patrol boat trapped a semi-submersible craft after an unarmed U.S. Orion P-3 patrol aircraft had sighted it. The craft sank, leaving three survivors and one dead.
The semi-submersible craft are sometimes mis-identified as submarines but always navigate with their conning tower out of the water. They can carry up to three tons of narcotics and are nearly impossible to detect by radar.
In this case, the craft inexplicably sank as it attempted to escape and two Hondurans and a Guatemalan crew member escaped. The U.S. frigate picked up the presumed captain’s lifeless body and several packets of drugs.
In Costa Rica, the Siquirres police, acting on a tip from OIJ, captured a truck loaded with 500 kilos (more than 1,000 lbs.) of cocaine, The packets of drugs were concealed in false walls of the truck bed.
Earlier, last Sunday, police confiscated 180 kilos of cocaine in a trailer at the northern border crossing of Peñas Blancas. Unusual for such a capture, police also grabbed 12 kilos of heroin in the cargo trailer.
Only three days before that, police at the border with Nicaragua nabbed another 138 kilos of cocaine in a trailer.
All this action was on the heels of the Nov. 29 capture of a fishing boat carrying more than a ton of cocaine 216 nautical miles off Costa Rica’s Punta Burica in the Pacific Ocean. Four crew members were arrested.
