Why Cassie Sainsbury is a 'small fish' in Colombian drug trade
For the last six months Australian Cassie Sainsbury has been the grim face of Colombia's cocaine trade.
Her greatly reduced sentence of just six years was supposed to be a warning to any would be smugglers.
But in Colombia Cassie Sainsbury is a nobody. Her case has been barely mentioned in local media. She was arrested with 5.8 kilos of cocaine at Bogota airport. Her lawyer called her a small fish.
By Colombian standards that's an overstatement and this is why.
Colombia is now producing more cocaine than ever. The UN estimates in 2016, 866 tonnes were produced. This week in Colombia's north 12 tonnes were seized.
After the big US backed crackdown in the 90's, coke is back. Big time.
Forty percent of Colombia's cocaine now comes from the region of Tumaco. It sits just above the border with Ecuador and this is where 9NEWS ventured to see how the military is trying to crush illicit trade.
The Colombian military flew us to a small clearing in the jungle and here we were met by soldiers who just discovered hectare after hectare of coca plants, the raw ingredient for cocaine.
It's an easy cash crop for locals. They harvest the leaves for the drug gangs and guerrilla groups. A tonne of leaves makes one kilo of cocaine, earning farmers around $500. In Australia a kilo of cocaine on the street is worth about $300,000.
The troops can't spray the coca because of health concerns. Instead they hack into the two metre high plants with brush cutters and then pile them onto a bonfire.
What’s left is a 300mm stump and if it's left untouched it will grow into a mature plant in several months. It means the soldiers have to use shovels and brute strength to yank every stump from the earth.
Sergeant Emiro Ordonez tells me, "its dangerous work. The rebels in the hills overlooking the crops have taken to planting landmines."
As we are filming, word comes through fellow soldiers with the jungle battalion have discovered a laboratory in nearby bush. They make one arrest and parade him before the cameras. It's unclear if he's the chemist, the man charged with turning coca leaves into cocaine paste. The lab has a dozen or so large glass beakers.
They also find some of the crude ingredients used to make the drug. Cement and petrol are used to break down the leaves. Later in the process they use kerosene sulphuric and hydrochloric acid. And they talk about cocaine purity.
In weeks and months down the line, the cocaine will be snorted in clubs and homes from New York to London to Sydney.
At Tumaco airport the man overseeing the slash and burn operation is General Sergi Tarfur. "It is not easy but we will win in two years, maybe more."
The farmers are offered a cash payment of $11,000 to switch to another crop such as a cocoa. But old habits die hard. As we prepare to leave we notice locals scooping up as many leaves as they can before they are told by soldiers to move away.
While cocaine remains the white collar party drug of choice around the world, Colombia's military may need to invest heavily in more shovels and brush cutters.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/2017/11/12/13/25/cassie-sainsbury-cocaine-trade-colombia
