Now drug smugglers turn to submarines

phr

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Now drug smugglers turn to submarines
Jeremy McDermott
The Scotsman
1.4.08



SOUTH American drug seizures at sea are at a record high, with 70 tons of cocaine worth more than £800 million found by the Colombian navy alone last year, prompting drugs cartels to move their shipments deeper under cover, beneath the waves.
During last year, more than ten submarines – or "narcosubs" – were discovered by the Colombian and United States navies, more than were found during the past ten years put together.

"As time passes, the drugs traffickers change the ways they move drugs. Now it is about submarines," Juan Carlos Molano, a coastguard captain, said.

Until now, the favoured method has been the use of super-fast speed boats, designed to be nautical bullets that take tons of drugs darting across the water, especially the Caribbean, travelling so fast the navy has no vessel fast enough to intercept.

Now, however, the US, Colombian, British and Dutch navies that patrol the Caribbean are co-ordinating activity, scrambling patrol craft and helicopters to intercept the boats as soon as they leave the Colombian shoreline.

Another benefit of the submarines for traffickers is they can carry far larger cargoes than the super-fast boats. One of the largest submarines in use was discovered in November in a jungle estuary in the province of Narino, by the Pacific Ocean. A massive fibreglass construction almost 60ft long and 10ft wide, the sub could carry 12 tons of drugs, needing a crew of four. Its estimated construction cost was £750,000.

In the same month, a few hundred miles up the coast near the drug-smuggling centre of Buenaventura, two more submarines were found in a guerrilla shipyard, each 56ft long.

The submarines, alongside go-fast speedboats, were being built by rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This 12,000-strong army is largely financed by the drugs trade and is now working in tandem not just with drugs cartels but with right-wing paramilitaries that were once its sworn enemies. One of the subs was finished, kitted out with a 350-horsepower diesel engine and fuel tanks big enough to take the vessel up to Mexico or anywhere in Central America.

Many of the submarines are not fully submersible, in the sense that they do not dive deep under the water like naval boats. Rather, the drug subs are "semi-submersibles", which means that the body of the vessel stays under the water line, with breathing tubes and part of the navigation system visible.

"What is visible is so small that it is hard for land or air radar to pick them up," said Admiral Gabriel Garcia.

It is clear that some of the drug subs can travel thousands of miles. One, 33ft in length, was found off the north-west coast of Spain last year, no doubt abandoned after its cargo of up to five tons of drugs had been unloaded.

A Colombian coastguard official said a submersible's crew, detained last year after their 55ft vessel sank off the coast of Tumaco, Colombia, told police that they viewed the craft as a death trap, but had been lured by the £1,000 payment the drug magnates had promised if they guided the vessel to Central America.

Asked to describe the men detained, the coastguard official merely said: "Crazy."

As well as semi-submersibles, drugs traffickers are known to use underwater containers filled with drugs that are attached by cable to fishing boats and dragged in their wake. The advantage of this system is that, if the boats are intercepted, the fishing vessels simply drop the cable holding the drugs, meaning there is no evidence of smuggling.

However, the crews of the drug subs also have orders to scuttle their vessels rather than allow the narcotics to be captured. On 7 December, four men were rescued after sinking their drug subs, laden with as much as 12 tons of drugs off Colombia. They were picked up by a US navy vessel, their clothes showing signs of contact with cocaine.

However, the submarine sank to the bottom of the 10,000ft-deep ocean, according to Admiral Edgar Cely, the Colombian navy's chief of operations, thus burying much of the evidence against them. The men admitted they had been paid £1,000 each to pilot the vessel to Central America.

What also worries US and Colombian intelligence officials is the military use that these subs could be put to.

"There could be five tons of anything on board these things," said a senior US military official involved in the "war on drugs".

A senior official with the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Colombia said: "Any viable method to covertly transport large quantities of illicit drugs over long distances such as these (vessels] could conceivably be employed to transport other prohibited materials."

HOW SMUGGLERS ARE GOING TO EXTREMES

THE largest narco-sub yet discovered was 100ft long and would have been capable of carrying 200 tonnes of cocaine.

The Bogota warehouse where it was being constructed – apparently to Russian plans – was raided by Colombian police in 2000 before the vessel could be brought into use.

While the capital is landlocked, officers speculated that, once completed, the submarine would have been dismantled and taken by lorry to Colombia's Pacific or Caribbean coast.

The move to find ever more covert ways of shipping drugs is a response to international efforts to clamp down on the trade.

Even so, resources are an issue. A US senate hearing was told last month that the Drug Enforcement Administration had far more intelligence on South American drug cartels than it had the capacity to act on.

Nevertheless, the US Coast Guard recently said illicit trafficking in cocaine was seemingly shift
ing from the Caribbean to the Pacific, as it announced record seizures last year.

"We have forced them to adapt to routes that are dangerous and are expensive," said Coast Guard Commander Bob Watts in announcing cocaine seizures worth more than $4.7 billion (£2.3 billion).

He said because of the US Coast Guard's increased surveillance in the Caribbean Sea, smugglers are turning to riskier tactics, including dissolving cocaine in diesel fuel.

He said they had also been forced to turn to the more expensive and arduous Pacific routes, including via the Galapagos Islands, since most routes via the Caribbean Sea have been shut down. Africa was increasingly being used as an alternative trans-shipment route to the drug market in Europe.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, followed by Peru and Bolivia.

Link!
 
All these articles (+ the scientist-border crossing one) seem to do is make me want to do is get a job as a trafficker.

I've never been so jealous of columbian dirt farmers.
 
This is sweet, using submarines to smuggle drugs, drug trafficking is getting advanced! Narcosubs, haha.
 
article said:
As well as semi-submersibles, drugs traffickers are known to use underwater containers filled with drugs that are attached by cable to fishing boats and dragged in their wake. The advantage of this system is that, if the boats are intercepted, the fishing vessels simply drop the cable holding the drugs, meaning there is no evidence of smuggling.
8o 8o 8o
Wow!! I have never heard of that, although it makes a shit-ton of sense. Damn, that sounds like it'd negate the need for subs (or faux subs anyways) altogether! Clearly they are finding subs worthwhile though, but damn, that kind of method seems to have little faults with it. Cargo can be dumped to avoid both trouble and the loss of a load (if setup for recovery, all you'd need would be coordinates), and a fishing boat would go right to shore wherever! Damn!!


article said:
A senior official with the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Colombia said: "Any viable method to covertly transport large quantities of illicit drugs over long distances such as these (vessels] could conceivably be employed to transport other prohibited materials."
Yeah, that's actually pretty scary if you think about it. The drug war is creating an ever-increasingly sophisticated 'enemy', to the point their logistics may very well spill over and help shit that's genuinely evil :X .



article said:
Even so, resources are an issue. A US senate hearing was told last month that the Drug Enforcement Administration had far more intelligence on South American drug cartels than it had the capacity to act on.
LOL!! More fucking cash?! You want even more tax dollars for your drug war?! PLEASE!


article said:
Africa was increasingly being used as an alternative trans-shipment route to the drug market in Europe.
Damn africa is just seeming ever more likely to become the next major narco-empire huh?



article said:
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, followed by Peru and Bolivia.
...wow, ya don't say?
 
Not suprising really, I've heard stories of coke trafficker's using ex-soviet nuclear subs to transport drugs, wouldnt suprise me reallly.
 
Wow!! I have never heard of that, although it makes a shit-ton of sense. Damn, that sounds like it'd negate the need for subs (or faux subs anyways) altogether! Clearly they are finding subs worthwhile though, but damn, that kind of method seems to have little faults with it. Cargo can be dumped to avoid both trouble and the loss of a load (if setup for recovery, all you'd need would be coordinates), and a fishing boat would go right to shore wherever! Damn!!
Yeah, it sounds like a decent idea, but it does have its limitations. The amount of weight, the water depth, how you're gonna recover it if you cut the chain, etc.
 
^^ a few hundred dollars and a little bit of PERL know-how and those are barely even problems.

PDA/cell phone/laptop, re-wired, could release a flotation device by a signal. Then all you have to do is go back to the spot where you ditched it, make a phone call/radio signal, and a floaty pops up, attached to a wire/chain, and you pull up your drugs.
 
I use a Pocket Fisherman to recover my drugs.

In other news, the DEA has asked congress to increase the agency's 2008 budget by $100 million for the acquisition of depth charges to combat the new narco-sub menace to Amerika's youth.

This should be interesting: narco-cowboys vs. narco-submariners...

GO TEAM DEA!
 
^
You know they're trying to use this to their advantage to secure more funding.

A US senate hearing was told last month that the Drug Enforcement Administration had far more intelligence on South American drug cartels than it had the capacity to act on.
Yup, that's why their interdiction rate is so low. They simply don't have enough money and manpower to search every single person and baggage crossing the border.
 
Stickittotheman said:
^^ a few hundred dollars and a little bit of PERL know-how and those are barely even problems.

PDA/cell phone/laptop, re-wired, could release a flotation device by a signal. Then all you have to do is go back to the spot where you ditched it, make a phone call/radio signal, and a floaty pops up, attached to a wire/chain, and you pull up your drugs.
that's essentially what I was thinking...

a fishing boat, well, I'd have to imagine the weight of your load would become kind of irrelevant, but at worst, what, a couple extra trips?
<edited, nevermind lol>

Completely hypothetical of course.. don't tase me bro!!!
 
Last edited:
tobala said:
I use a Pocket Fisherman to recover my drugs.

In other news, the DEA has asked congress to increase the agency's 2008 budget by $100 million for the acquisition of depth charges to combat the new narco-sub menace to Amerika's youth.

This should be interesting: narco-cowboys vs. narco-submariners...

GO TEAM DEA!
the lame part being that these subs are NOT even that deep, but I bet the dea would take a full fledged sub fleet, from the taxpayers of course, if it were offered.

As phrozen said, they're just beggin for more cash, and it's an easy sell to politicians, lest they look soft on drugs, which unfortunately at this time is almost akin to political suicide for many. It's easy funding and, the worst part, is it's wasted money 100%. If we increased their budget by TWICE what they were asking for, they'd still just be able to make little dents here and there at best, we know this - history has shown this for how many decades now? Basic economic theory already tells us this though, through the extremely simple concept of supply and demand. I can use history books to show why giving the dea more money is stupid and wasteful, or econ textbooks, your call =D
 
haha ya I edited that, when written I figured it was of such a huge magnitude that, clearly, it would have to be inherently ficticious, but see what you mean.
 
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