Police seized a 10-ton consignment of cocaine with a
street value of US$200 million in Barranquilla which was reportedly about to be sent to
Mexico.
The drugs were found in the Caribbean city of Barranquilla in two
trucks where they were camouflaged in boxes filled with children’s
modelling clay.
The drugs were headed for the city of Veracruz in Mexico.
They allegedly belonged to one of Colombia’s top traffickers, Daniel Barrera, nicknamed “The Madman”.
The cocaine was seized after a six-month intelligence operation which tracked a drug route up to Barranquilla.
The drugs were moved in two containers travelling on trucks that were to be put on a ship and dispatched to Mexico.
Gen Oscar Naranjo, the chief of Colombia’s police force, said that the consignment belonged to “The Madman”.
The trafficker is known to move through the eastern plains of
Colombia and into Venezuela where he often bases himself out of reach
of the Colombian security forces and the US Drug Enforcement
Administration, the DEA.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela does not co-operate with the US anti-drug agencies.
Colombian drug lords have taken advantage of this not only to
turn Venezuela into one of the principal transit nations for cocaine,
but to use it as a refuge, the BBC’s Jeremy McDermott reports from
Colombia. (BBC)