US agents target 73 suspects in PR anti-drug raid

By MIKE MELIA, The Associated Press
2:25 p.m. September 29, 2009

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hundreds of U.S. and local agents swept into a town in southern Puerto Rico on Tuesday to break up violent drug rings accused of operating out of several public housing projects.

The pre-dawn raids, which netted 64 of 73 wanted suspects, are part of a strategy to eliminate trafficking networks one at a time in this U.S. Caribbean territory – a major transshipment point for South American cocaine and heroin bound for the U.S. mainland.

The defendants arrested in Villalba had links to traffickers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and are under investigation for violent crimes including the slaying of a police commander's son, U.S. authorities said at a news conference.

"The town of Villalba was returned to its citizens today," said Pedro Janer, an assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration of Puerto Rico.

Drug traffickers in Puerto Rico exploit public housing projects, many of them fenced off from surrounding communities, as key distribution points for cocaine and heroin.

The drugs arrive from South America and often stay on the island as payment for smugglers who ship the rest on to the U.S. mainland. As an American territory, authorities say, Puerto Rico is the most popular transit point in the Caribbean because drugs leaving here do not have to clear customs on the way to the United States.

With drug-related violence soaring, authorities set up strike forces involving U.S. and local agents to target the traffickers. Over the past three years, they have arrested more than 1,100 suspects.

"We're getting everybody, from the top to the runners and the cooks," U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said in an earlier interview. "We charge everybody."

The arrests in Villalba, which involved more than 300 law enforcement agents, followed a two-year investigation led by the DEA. The suspects were indicted by a U.S. grand jury Thursday on charges including conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin and conspiracy to possess firearms during drug trafficking crimes.

Also Tuesday, Puerto Rico authorities arrested 19 people accused of belonging to a drug- and weapons-trafficking gang on the north side of the island. Justice Secretary Antonio Sagardia said it generated thousands of dollars a day from drug distribution points inside public housing projects.

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