Drug cartels take trafficking to the sea in custom-built, cocaine-laden 'narco subs'

Drug traffickers are spending $1 million a pop to build boats that look like submarines and can carry 4 tons of cocaine for 2,000 miles without refueling. Nicknamed "narco subs," they're made to sneak loads up from South America to Mexico, where the drugs are offloaded and taken overland into the United States. "It is a semi-submersible coffin," said Jay Bergman, Andean regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "You batten down the hatches and you are doing everything to not be detected sailing in the middle of the ocean." At least 13 of the craft have been stopped and their crews prosecuted in U.S. courts since October 2008, according to the Justice Department. The first was intercepted in 2006. The use of narco subs underscores how drug cartels have sought to go over, under or around borders, and have prompted worries that the craft could be used to smuggle weapons or people.

The latest craft was captured last month when a Houston Chronicle journalist was aboard a Customs and Border Protection plane flying from Corpus Christi. The P-3 turboprop was 500 miles off Colombia's coast, coordinating with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Dallas. "This will go down quickly," advised a helicopter shadowing two speedboats. Flanked by armed Coast Guard boarding teams, three underwear-clad traffickers waved a white flag, climbed out of a hatch and into the American justice system. The boat carried more than 2 tons of cocaine, but most carry 4 to 8 tons, law enforcement official say. Most of the vessels are enclosed, usually a bit longer than school buses, and painted blue to blend in with the ocean. While they don't submerge, they do ride low enough in the water to be tough to spot with radar or heat-seeking cameras.

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Cocaine worth $1bn seized in The Gambia

At least two tonnes of cocaine with a street value of some $1bn has been seized in The Gambia, bound for Europe. In addition to the huge haul of drugs, the Gambian authorities have arrested a dozen suspected traffickers, and seized large quantities of cash and arms. Gambian investigators made the first arrests then called in British agents to gather forensic evidence. West Africa has become a major transit hub for trafficking Latin American drugs to markets in Europe. Drugs cartels are taking advantage of the region's poverty and weak security and judicial systems. Agents from the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency - the rough equivalent of the US FBI - helped discover the haul of highly concentrated cocaine behind a false wall in a warehouse basement an hour's drive from the Gambian capital, Banjul.

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West African cocaine use rises along smuggling routes

West Africans are consuming more of the drugs trafficked between South America and Europe, raising the spectre of rising crime and health problems in already unstable states, experts said. The region, an established transit point for Latin American cocaine to big Western markets, has also become a drug processing site amid rising addiction rates, and drug-related violence will follow, they told a drug summit over the weekend. "A flourishing illicit trade in the hands of organised crime is obviously a threat to the rule of law, governance and, as a result, human rights," said Alexandre Schmidt, West African head for the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "But we must no longer hide the indirect consequences with regard to the increase in problems linked to drug abuse." About 20 tonnes of cocaine passed through West Africa in 2008, worth about $1-billion, the United Nations says. The warnings came during a meeting of seven West African governments who, backed by the United Nations, France and Spain, are seeking to implement declarations of intent to curb trafficking.

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Al-Qaeda's New Business Model: Cocaine And Human Trafficking

Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization has become increasingly reliant on organized crime, including cocaine smuggling, human trafficking and kidnapping, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in Manhattan's federal court. The charges filed against three alleged al-Qaeda associates by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan is the latest chilling evidence of a convergence between terrorism and organized crime.

Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman were snatched in Ghana on Wednesday by a Drug Enforcement Administration sting and shipped to New York, where they arrived on Friday to face charges of conspiracy to commit acts of narco-terrorism and providing material support to al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization. The arrests mark the first time that al-Qaeda associates have been charged with narco-terrorism offenses.

The complaint accuses the three men of agreeing to transport large amounts of South American cocaine through West and North Africa and ultimately to Spain for $2,000 a kilogram, a fee slated to be partly turned over to al-Qaeda and its affiliated group, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, in return for protection along the route.

"It's pretty compelling evidence, but not the only evidence that has been growing that al-Qaeda and its affiliates are becoming more and more involved in the global drug trade to help fund their operations," says Michael Braun, former chief of operations at the DEA and a founder of Spectre Group International. "They have to pay for their operations somehow."

• "US arrests three Africans in al-Qaeda cocaine sting", BBC News, 12/19/09.
• "US Prosecution links drugs to terrorism", Los Angeles Times, 12/19/09.
• "Feds: Arrests in Africa line al-Qaida and drugs", New York Times, 12/18/09.
  

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Latin American drug cartels find home in West Africa

Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market.

The situation has gotten so out of hand that tiny Guinea-Bissau, the fifth-poorest nation in the world, is being called Africa's first narco-state. Others talk about how Africa's Gold Coast has become the Coke Coast. In all, officials say, at least nine top-tier Latin American drug cartels have established bases in 11 West African nations.

"The same organizations that we investigate in Central and South America that are involved in drug activity toward the United States are engaged in this trafficking in Western Africa," said Russell Benson, the Drug Enforcement Agency regional director for Europe and Africa. "There's not one country that hasn't been touched to some extent."

The calculus is simple: bigger profits in Europe than in the United States, less law enforcement in West Africa than in Europe. The driving force is the booming European market for cocaine.

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