Police on Tuesday discovered an elaborate tunnel network in the north of Colombia, used by prominent fugitive drug trafficker “Megateo” to avoid capture.
Drug trafficker and leader of the dissident faction of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) guerrilla movement, Victor Ramon Navarro, alias Megateo, has been evading arrest via the tunnels located in the Catatumbo region in the Norte de Santander department.
On Tuesday, authorities said they had arrested 14 alleged members of the officially demobilized EPL rebel outfit. According to Caracol Radio, the group was arrested as the result of a two-year operation by Colombian officials and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to uncover a drug-trafficking operation from Colombia to the U.S. and Europe.
During the investigation, police placed a chip in the camp of Megateo, but when agents reached the site he had already escaped. “Then we started to receive information about the tunnels”, said one investigator.
The EPL officially demobilized in 1991, however hundreds of its former members subsequently turned to drug trafficking and are alleged to have strong ties to the present-day leaders of drug cartel “Los Rastrojos” and neo-paramilitary group “Los Urabeños.”