USCG/Cocaine Sub Captured

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/20/dr...bs/#cnnSTCVideo

U.S. captures $187 million drug haul in submarine

By John McPhaul
Tue Sep 16, 11:48 PM ET



SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - The U.S. coast guard captured a submarine-like vessel equipped with sophisticated navigation equipment and stuffed with seven tonnes of cocaine, Costa Rican authorities said on Tuesday.


In a difficult nighttime operation during the weekend, U.S. officials arrested four Colombian smugglers on board the 59-foot (18-meter) steel and fiberglass vessel in international waters before they could sink it.

"The boat was partially submerged but you can't call it amateurish. The drug traffickers are not amateurs," Jose Pastor, a spokesman for Costa Rica's public security ministry told Reuters.

Several makeshift submarines toting drugs have been captured recently on the high seas. In July, the Mexican special forces captured a similar submarine carrying 200 tightly wrapped packages of cocaine.

On Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard sent a team of special agents on small boats to surprise the smugglers after a U.S. Navy airplane spotted the sub. When the traffickers realized the agents were on their deck they shifted the boat violently in an attempt to throw the officers into the sea.

After that failed, they complied with orders not to open hatches designed to sink the craft, said the Coast Guard.

"This was the most dangerous operation of my career," Todd Bagetis, the lieutenant in charge of the Coast Guard team, said in a statement.

Official photos showed the craft packed full of 37 bales of cocaine with a street value of $187 million.

The vessel was likely capable of traveling from South America to the U.S. coast without stopping for fuel or supplies, said the Coast Guard.

The U.S. ship that nabbed the traffickers was set to arrive to the Costa Rican port of Caldera on Wednesday with the drug boat in tow, Pastor said.

(Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080917/us_nm/costarica_drugs_dc

Looks like drug rings from different countries have been using these :wow:

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Drug sub carrying 7 tons of cocaine busted
Seattle crew in on $196 million haul

By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTER

The crews of the Seattle-based Coast Guard cutter Midgett and a Navy maritime patrol plane teamed up to catch a drug-running submarine carrying 7 tons of cocaine worth about $196 million, Coast Guard officials said Friday.

The 60-foot sub, a semi-submersible vessel, was caught by the Midgett about 400 miles south of the Mexico-Guatemala border after the Navy air crew detected it and guided the cutter to it Wednesday.

An armed boarding party from the Midgett found 195 bales of cocaine in a large forward compartment of the sub, authorities said.

As the bales were being transferred, the sub became unstable and started to sink. Unsafe to tow, the boat was sunk by the Midgett's crew, which considered it a potential hazard to navigation.
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Zoom Coast Guard
A drug sub, a self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel, was seized Wednesday off the coast of Mexico and Guatemala. The Seattle-based Coast Guard cutter Midgett helped capture the boat and its load of 7 tons of cocaine, worth about $196 million.

It was the second discovery of a drug sub, or SPSS for "self-propelled semi-submersible" vessel, in five days. The boats, considered "stateless" because they are unflagged, can travel from Ecuador to San Diego without stopping for food or fuel, the Coast Guard said.

The first sub was captured Sunday by the USS McInerney's crew. It was about 350 miles off the coast of Guatemala with four suspected Colombian drug runners and 7 tons of cocaine, according to a Naval Forces Southern Command statement.

The smugglers tried to throw the boarding team into the sea by reversing engines. When that failed, the team thwarted an attempt to sink the vessel when it "compelled the smugglers to comply" with orders to close scuttling valves, according to a Coast Guard news release. The McInerney took the sub in tow.

The drug subs, also known as narco-subs, are homemade and 25 to 65 feet long. They generally can carry 3 to 5 tons of cocaine and are designed solely for smuggling drugs, Navy officials said.

While the semi-submersibles cannot dive, the boats are dangerous to capture, putting boarding parties at particular risk, because they have valves that allow smugglers to abandon and sink the vessel quickly, Navy officials said.

The use of the subs has grown in recent years. Relatively few are captured as smugglers often scuttle them when detected.

"Over the past five days, Pacific Area Coast Guard units, with the help of our U.S. Navy and interagency partners, seized more than 14 tons of cocaine with a street value of more than $383 million," Adm. Thad Allen, Coast Guard commandant, said in a written statement.

The 37-year-old Midgett is the last of the Coast Guard's 378-foot "high endurance" cutters designed for deep-water duty. It conducts armed search-and-rescue and law enforcement missions. In addition to a Mark 75 3-inch gun with a range of 10 nautical miles capable of firing up to 80 rounds a minute, the Midgett carries 25 mm and .50-caliber machine guns, while its crew members are trained in handling small arms.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/379835_coastguard20.html

Yet another drug sub caught:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091022/...guatemala_drugs