Colombia has made its largest ever drugs seizure, with almost 25 metric tons of cocaine, valued at UKP250 million, found ready for export in a hide on the Pacific coast. "This is the largest seizure in Colombian history," said Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos of the shipment found near the town of Pizarro in the Pacific province of Choco. The discovery was the result of eight months of undercover work by Colombia's secret intelligence service, the DAS, which received a tip off that the huge drug consignment had been put together in the estuary of Pizarro. The drugs, in almost 1000 waterproof, vacuum-packed bricks, were about to be loaded onto 'go fast' launches to make the trip along the Pacific coast up towards Mexico. The high speed motor boasts were to either rendezvous with larger ships or transfer the drugs onto other launches which would take them to Central America or Mexico where Mexican cartels would smuggle the cocaine across the border in to the US. advertisement [continues 307 words]
Latin America, the "backyard" of the United States, has slipped out of Washington's control and the US president, George Bush, today mounts a last-ditch effort to regain influence with his longest ever visit to a region increasingly in the hands of foes such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. "It's a calculated effort to become more proactive in confronting Chavez and shoring up US allies in the region," said Cynthia Arnson, of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington. [continues 872 words]
Cucuta is the contraband capital of Colombia, where powerful criminal syndicates own the local government and patrol the slums, acting as sheriff in this frontier town. It is also the departure point for most of the cocaine that lands on British shores. There is not even a pretence of legality in Cucuta. Along the border there is a staggering concentration of old American jalopies, and contraband petrol is sold openly along the highways. "They have massive fuel tanks, the American cars," muttered Orlando, sucking on his last remaining teeth. [continues 809 words]
Peru's brutal rebel movement, the Shining Path, long thought to be all but extinct, is on the warpath again, boosted by an alliance with drug traffickers. Its Maoist guerrillas almost vanished after the capture of their founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1993, with only a few hundred left sheltering in remote highlands. But those mountains are now the setting for a dramatic growth in cultivating coca to produce cocaine, and veteran fighters are now serving new masters, the drug barons. [continues 313 words]
Bolivia has its first indigenous Indian president after a landslide victory that leaves relations with the United States at a historic low and Washington's war on drugs in tatters. Evo Morales, 46, who was the clear favourite, far exceeded expectations, with exit polls and quick counts of the ballots showing him passing the 50 per cent barrier. He will be the first president to do so since the country returned to democracy in 1982. "We have won and now we are going to change this country," said Mr Morales, surrounded by delirious supporters. "All the majority together. The people are finally in power." [continues 866 words]
Colombian drug cartels have developed a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine, dealing a setback to a government campaign against production of the drug. The new plant was discovered by police during an operation in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Experts pronounced it to be a new strain developed by drugs traffickers. It is estimated that the traffickers spent $140 million Canadian to develop the new plant, crossbreeding strains from Peru with potent Colombian varieties, and using genetic engineering. [continues 156 words]
Traffickers Spend $140M Producing Strain Colombian drug cartels have developed a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine, dealing a setback to a campaign against production of the drug that was beginning to show results. The new plant was discovered by police during an operation in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Experts pronounced it to be a new strain developed by drugs traffickers. It is estimated that the traffickers spent $140 million Cdn in research to develop the new plant, crossbreeding strains from Peru with potent Colombian varieties, and using genetic engineering. [continues 185 words]
Drug traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia's drugs industry. The new variety of coca, the raw material for cocaine, was found in an anti-drug operation on the Caribbean coast, on the mountainsides of the Sierra Nevada, long known as a drug-growing region. Samples of the plant were sent for laboratory analysis and experts then pronounced drugs traffickers had developed a new breed. [continues 576 words]
The gradual demise of the Norte del Valle drug cartel will not stem the flow of narcotics from Colombia, but will enable the government to focus on the rebels and paramilitaries who are taking over the trade. Jeremy McDermott investigates. The last of Colombia's big drug cartels, the Norte del Valle (NDV) group, is embroiled in a bitter internal struggle that will curtail if not end the power of the organisation. However, its demise is unlikely to reduce the quantity of drugs leaving Colombia - estimated at up to 800 tonnes of cocaine and 10 tonnes of heroin every year - as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) and the paramilitaries of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC), now control around 70 per cent of the drugs leaving the country. [continues 4728 words]
THE rebels have seen 11 presidents come and go and have no fear of the latest counterinsurgency, backed by the US. The Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, marked its 40th anniversary promising to continue its ?200m-a-year business of drug smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. Colombia was in lockdown this weekend, with police and army checkpoints in place around all major towns and cities. The government of Oxford-educated Alvaro Uribe ordered the security operation to prevent bloodshed. It was relatively successful with only 20 people being killed across the country in rebel attacks. [continues 1010 words]
America yesterday named Colombia's Marxist guerrillas and Right-wing paramilitaries as international drugs trafficking groups, opening the way for their leaders to face extradition and trial in US courts. The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc and the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) were already designated terrorist groups. But that meant they could face American justice, rather than Colombia's corrupt and overburdened courts, only if Americans were victims of their activities. Now the US Treasury Department has added 37 new names to its list of drug "kingpins", including the high command of both groups. [continues 177 words]
A Colombian Court Has Ordered The Suspension Of The US-Backed Aerial Drug Eradication Programme. The administrative tribunal of Cundinamarca ruled that spraying of coca crops must be stopped until a study is conducted to determine the effects of the chemicals on the environment and public health. The programme is the backbone of the anti-drug war in Colombia, and the hardline government of President Alvaro Uribe had vowed to spray more drug crops than ever over the course of this year. [continues 169 words]
AFTER the murder of a CIA operative and a Colombian intelligence official by guerrillas, the United States is considering a rescue mission to free three other CIA contractors in rebel hands. "They had shots to the back of the head that show they were assassinated in cold blood," said the US president, George Bush, in an interview with Telemundo Television. "They [Colombian rebels] are ruthless killers and deserve to be treated as such. We are sharing intelligence and are co-ordinating the movements of troops in the jungle to try and rescue these three people." [continues 367 words]
Two Central Intelligence Agency operatives have been captured by Marxist guerrillas in Colombia, it appeared yesterday, while another two were dead, perhaps assassinated, after a light aircraft they were travelling in crash-landed. United States officials were prepared only to admit that one of their aircraft, carrying four American citizens and a Colombian, was forced to make an emergency landing in the guerrilla-dominated southern province of Caqueta. "Somewhere during the flight, the engine cut out and they were looking for a place to put down," said a State Department spokesman, Chip Barclay. [continues 266 words]
The reconquest of Colombia has begun. Hard-line President Alvaro Uribe has moved his country onto a war footing and headed up to Washington to enrol Colombia in the US "war on terrorism". And to ask President George W Bush to wade deeper into the quagmire of Colombia's 38-year civil conflict. Three of the Colombia's provinces have been selected as the start point for the state's reconquest of the country. One of them, Arauca, has been designated a "Zone of Rehabilitation and Consolidation". [continues 524 words]
Colombian troops have seized four tonnes of cocaine worth $120m on the country's Pacific coast. A naval patrol vessel bristling with marines found the drugs, vacuum-packed and ready to be shipped to the United States, on a boat moored up against a river bank in the dense jungle at Cabo Manglares, 480km (300 miles) south-west of the capital, Bogota. The authorities said the cocaine belonged to the right-wing paramilitaries of the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia, the AUC. [continues 233 words]
Colombia's Right-Wing Paramilitaries Are To Give Up Drug Trafficking And Massacring Opponents, They Claimed Yesterday. Carlos Castano, the warlord who founded the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), dissolved the group a month ago after widespread abuses by its members. Since then paramilitary organisations have operated independently, but have taken a battering from Marxist guerrillas and the state. Leaders of 18 paramilitary groups met last week at a ranch in Uraba in north Colombia and voted to reform and re-invent themselves. [continues 138 words]
President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia imposed a limited state of emergency yesterday after more than 100 people were killed by Marxist rebels in the five days since he took office. The "state of internal commotion" gives him power to sideline Congress on security issues. It also authorises preventive detention without a warrant, the suppression of protests, restrictions on the movements of civilians and curbs on the media. The first measure imposed after an all-night cabinet session was a wealth tax on individuals and businesses with liquid assets of more than UKP40,000. It is intended to raise UKP510 million for the security forces. [continues 361 words]
We Taught IRA How To Ambush THE IRA's connection with Colombian terrorists dates back to the 1980s when they were trained by paramilitary fighters linked to the late drug baron Pablo Escobar, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Three Irishmen accused of training Colombian Marxist guerrillas in the use of explosives are currently awaiting trial in Bogota after they were arrested in the Colombian jungle last year. Recent IRA involvement in the South American state, which has been rocked by a spate of car bombs and mortar attacks since February, has been with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which shares similar political ideals. [continues 975 words]
AN outspoken Colombian archbishop was shot dead at the weekend as he left a church service in a murder that has all the hallmarks of a contract killing. Two men were waiting outside the Catholic church in a poor neighbourhood of Cali where Mgr Isaias Duarte, 63, had just conducted a group wedding service for 100 couples on Saturday. The men, described as teenagers, were on a motorcycle. When Mgr Duarte left the church, the pillion passenger got off, walked calmly up to the archbishop and shot him twice at point blank range, in the head and chest. [continues 412 words]
