Thread: Mexico seizes suspected drug submarine

Jul 17, 12:39 AM EDT


Mexico seizes suspected drug submarine


AP Photo/Miguel Angel Tovar





HUATULCO, Mexico (AP) -- Mexico's navy seized a homemade submarine carrying a drug shipment off the Pacific coast on Wednesday and arrested its four-man crew.

Similar vessels carrying cocaine have been discovered off Colombia and Central America, but navy spokesman Capt. Benjamin Mar said the seizure is a first for Mexico.

The 30-foot makeshift submarine was detected heading north about 200 miles off the southern state of Oaxaca, Mar said.

Green-topped and shaped like an arrowhead, the vessel was intercepted when it surfaced hours later. The crew was taken into custody without resistance.

The suspects were flown by helicopter to the city of Huatulco, where they told AP Television News they left the Colombian coastal town of Buenaventura a week ago. They said drug traffickers forced them to make the journey by threatening to harm their families.

The navy said in a statement that the sub was apparently packed with cocaine, but authorities were still determining how much was on board.

Colombia's drug cartels have been known to use home-built submarines to smuggle large amounts of cocaine past U.S. and Colombian patrol boats to Central America en route to the United States.

Colombian authorities have discovered at least nine such vessels over the past three years. Last August, U.S. forces intercepted a submarine-like vessel carrying tons of cocaine off the coast of Guatemala.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ ... TE=DEFAULT

OMG, What are the trashy druggies going to think of next????????

The mexican navy will seize the sub and probably sell it back to the mexican drug cartels who can use the sub to deliver drugs to the US...

Does anyone trust the Mexican Navy? I dont when it comes to drugs and money.

"Makeshift submarine"???

Did they use balsa wood???

Mexico faces new drug challenge: mini-submarines
Colombian suppliers have increasingly used small, semi-submersibles to try to smuggle drugs north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the U.S.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7:58 PM PDT, July 17, 2008

MEXICO CITY -- The capture was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine.

The 33-foot vessel turned out to be crammed with parcels apparently containing cocaine, possibly tons of it. The disheveled crew of four had emerged in stocking feet and baggy shorts, claiming to have shipped out from Colombia a week earlier under threat of death.

Mexico's military confirmed Thursday that the men were Colombian, but it offered little new information on the capture of the mini-sub off the southern coast a day earlier.

Capt. Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican navy, said authorities were hauling the "very well-constructed" vessel to shore and had yet to weigh the contraband, which he said probably amounted to tons.

The unusual episode suggests that the government, already struggling against drug traffickers by land and air, faces a vexing new front undersea.

Colombian drug suppliers have increasingly used small, semi-submersible craft to try to smuggle narcotics north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the U.S. Colombian forces and the U.S. Coast Guard have seized more than a dozen such boats during the last 2 1/2 years.

U.S. officials say the craft are being used more often because they are harder to detect by radar. The seizures represent a fraction of the 40 or so vessels that have been spotted since 2007, according to U.S. authorities.

"When they think they might be caught, the crews tend to scuttle them," said Jose Ruiz, spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which monitors drug activities. "They get out of them, sink them, and the drugs go to the bottom of the ocean so they can't be recovered for evidence."

Wednesday's seizure of the olive, surfboard-shaped vessel in the Pacific about 125 miles off the state of Oaxaca was the first of its kind off the coast of Mexico, authorities said.

The seizure provided images of speeding navy patrol boats and adrenaline-charged commandos perched atop the vessel -- a showy victory for President Felipe Calderon and his 18-month-old crackdown on drug-trafficking gangs.

The crackdown has sent 45,000 federal troops and police agents into the streets along the U.S. border and other key drug-smuggling corridors. Drug gangs have ratcheted up their capabilities by adding grenades and bazookas to their arsenals and, authorities say, outfitting cars with bombs for possible use against government forces.

Now authorities apparently face a maritime weapon as smugglers seek ways to move their product to U.S. consumers.

"Mexico is not prepared for this," said Guillermo Garduño, a national security specialist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. "If there is a naval front by the traffickers, it means the need [for Mexico] to restructure or modify its naval forces."

Unlike numerous other Latin American nations, Mexico does not have a submarine force, which was considered expensive and unnecessary.

But the growing use of small, hard-to-detect underwater craft could alter that thinking since such vessels could also be used by terrorists against Mexican oil-drilling equipment in the Gulf of Mexico, Garduño said.

In a statement, the navy said its forces moved in on the vessel after receiving intelligence from "national and international agencies."

Vergara declined to elaborate on the source of the intelligence or how the sub was tracked. In a television interview, he said that although such vessels can evade radar by staying just below the surface, they're easy to spot from the air because they cannot go deep.

U.S. officials in Mexico City praised the operation but would say only that they routinely cooperate with Mexican authorities to fight drug trafficking.

The crew members, interviewed by Mexican media on land as they were led into custody Wednesday, said they left the port city of Buenaventura, on Colombia's Pacific coast, seven days earlier. If so, they had traveled at least 1,300 miles before their capture.

The men, ranging in age from their 20s to late 50s, claimed to be fishermen and said they had been kidnapped and forced to make the journey by men who threatened their families. The sailors claimed they were unaware of the contents or destination of the craft, which they said was guided by a satellite navigation system. It was unclear how much control they had over the sub.

"They told us we had to take [the sub] where they sent us," suspect Rafael Jimenez, 27, was quoted in the Reforma newspaper as saying.

The men said they were to be paid $500 each.

Buenaventura is one of the places where Colombian authorities have seized the fiberglass mini-subs, some while still under construction. Officials believe that at least some of the boats have been built at the behest of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, of FARC, a rebel group widely considered the country's leading drug trafficker.

The homemade vessels have become increasingly sophisticated, with self-propelled models powered by 350-horsepower diesel engines and equipped with ballast and communications systems that make them hard to spot.

The vessels can be almost fully submerged, though they lack the diving and resurfacing abilities of true submarines.

U.S. law enforcement officials have expressed concern that the vessels could eventually be used by terrorists against American targets.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau and Times staff writer Vimal Patel in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 7274.story

July 18, 2008, 7:21PM
Almost 6 tons of cocaine found on seized sub


BY DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau


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MEXICO CITY — Mexican marines who seized a cocaine-laden submarine 120 miles off the country's Pacific Coast were acting on information provided by the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday.

"We provided intelligence. But the Mexican navy acted alone in executing the seizure," Chertoff told reporters at the end of a quick visit to Mexico City to discuss cooperation on the drug war and other security matters with Mexican counterparts.

Mexican marines lowered from helicopters captured the 30-foot-long, fiberglass semi-submersible vessel some 140 miles off Mexico's southwestern coast on Wednesday, officials said.

Sailors pulled nearly 6 tons of cocaine from the vessel's hold Friday after it was towed into the port of Salina Cruz.

The four-man sub, which apparently set sail from Colombia, was destined for the resort city of Huatulco and the northwestern state of Sinaloa, Mexican naval officers said. Its cargo was worth about $47 million at bulk wholesale prices in Mexico, the officials estimated, and perhaps as much as $120 million in Houston.

Colombian smugglers have increasingly turned to the vessels -- which actually float just under the surface rather than fully submerge like an actual submarine. The vessels' low profile in the water makes it difficult for radar to detect them.

"They never stop. They're always looking for the easiest way,"Chertoff said of the drug smugglers.

Still, American, Colombian and Central American authorities have seized a number of the vessels in recent years. Others have been scuttled before they could be boarded.

Under President Felipe Calderon, the Mexican government has been waging a sustained campaign against the country's powerful drug smuggling organizations, with mixed results.

Some 5,000 people have been killed in gangland violence since the crackdown began in December 2006. But the Mexican police, army and navy have seized some 62 tons of cocaine in the past 19 months. Another 20 tons of the narcotic destined for Mexico was captured last year off the coast of Panama.

Under the Merida Initiative approved recently by the U.S. Congress, the Bush administration will provide Mexico $400 million worth of equipment and training to assist in the anti-narcotics effort. In all, Mexico could receive$1.4 billion in the aid over a three-year period.

Chertoff praised the submarine seizure as an example of what American and Mexican officials hope to achieve with the increased cooperation.

"We've made a lot of progress," Chertoff said."We've got a lot more to do."

dudley.althaus@chron.com


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5895393.html