Joint action by RFA, Royal Navy and US Coast Guard nets huge haul of cocaine from the sea

It was a joint action by Royal Fleet Auxilliary ship, Royal Navy and US Coast Guard that helped to intercept a huge load of cocaine worth nearly £40m from a suspicious speedboat after a dramatic six-hour chase in the Caribbean.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 11 November 2016.

The 31,500-tonne RFA Wave Knight entered the scene after a patrol plane spotted a suspicious speedboat in the sea between Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Wave Knight launched her Lynx helicopter and, sitting in the back of the helicopter was a sniper from the Royal Marines who fired warning shots. Once these were ignored, he fired shots at the speedboat's engines to bring it to a halt.
Thereafter, US Coast Guard boarded and seized 350kg of cocaine which would have been worth about £14m if they had reached the UK.
Of course, before officials had reached the speedboat, the boat's crew had dumped another nearly 650kg of cocaine worth around £26m into the sea.
Subsequently, the five crew from the speedboat were taken with the drugs onto the US Coast Guard cutter and handed over to authorities in Miami Beach.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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Mexican police discover truck with bazooka to send drugs into the United States

Drug peddlers continue to come up with innovative measures to spread drugs and the latest one is from Mexico where Police have discovered a truck fitted with a home made bazooka designed to send consignment of drugs into the United States.
Mexico’s National Security Commission has announced over the weekend that federal police officers have found a panel van kitted out with an air compressor and a metal tube nearly 10 feet long. They believe the contraption was used as a bazooka to blast packets of narcotics across the border into the United States.
This has been reported in foxnews.com dated 19 September 2016.

The van was designed with a cut in the roof toward the rear to enable the tube to be used to launch projectiles, possibly from close to the border into the United States. The van was found abandoned in the town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, across the border from Douglas, Arizona. It had no license plates, and it had been reported stolen in Hermosillo, some 220 miles south of Agua Prieta, on July 1.
Illicit drugs are smuggled into the US from Mexico in a number of ways like hidden in cargo, carted in tunnels, via drug mules, catapulted or carried by drones. In the opinion of the authorities, drug traffickers have been using homemade cannons since as early as 2012. Packets of crystal meth, cocaine and marijuana that might have been fired from such cannons have turned up on the U.S. side of the border.


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Scotland Yard launches biggest ever crackdown on guns in London

In view of the increase in incidents of stabbings and firearms offenses, the Met Police have launched joint operations of crackdown on guns involving hundreds of specialist officers, including firearms teams. Ever since January, 15 teenagers have been stabbed to death in London. Hence this operation of Scotland Yard - it is one of its biggest ever operations against gun and knife crime in the capital.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 11 December 2015.

Apart from the stabbings of teenagers, there have also been more than 350 firearms-related incidents in London so far this year - this is up 15% on the 2014 figure.
The crackdown follows a guns amnesty that had been announced two weeks after the Paris terror attacks. As a result of the amnesty, dozens of guns were recovered, including an AK47 assault rifle, the same kind of weapon used in the attack on the French capital.
The operation, codenamed Kestrel, is being run by the Trident and Area Crime Command.
The police have seized eight firearms, including two handguns and three sawn-off shotguns, four knives, two swords, 11 kilos of cocaine, three kilos of cannabis, one kilo of MDMA, four kilos of crack cocaine and heroin with a street value of £250,000.
Operation Kestrel is an extension of an earlier initiative that had been launched against knife crime in June in which 6000 arrests were made and 1,000 knives were seized.

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Scuba diver smuggles cocaine across US-Mexico border via underwater tunnel

Drug smugglers have now resorted to using scuba divers to transport cocaine across the US-Mexico borders and this has been admitted by a Honduran national who has been apprehended while trying to smuggle drugs into the US via an underwater tunnel.
He was arrested in his scuba gear and a breathing tank with a "rebreather" to prevent surface bubbles, apart from 25 vacuum-sealed and giftwrapped packages that held a total of 55 pounds of cocaine. He has pleaded guilty in federal court in San Diego. He would face 20-years in prison if sentenced.
This has been reported in foxnews.com dated 20 August 2015.

As revealed by Border Patrol agents, they discovered near him a soaked Padilla in a wetsuit next to the All-American Canal, about 7 miles east of Calexico, California.
The police also discovered a 150-foot-long tunnel that began at a house in Mexicali, Mexico, and ended under the water of the canal. The modus operandi was to put the drugs on a trolley system on the dry Mexico side of the tunnel. The smugglers would then use scuba gear to retrieve it from under the canal's water from an opening normally invisible because of being obscured by rocks.
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The drugs were inside a tiny zipped up pouch strapped to the bird’s chest. The seizure was of about 14g of cocaine and at least the same amount of cannabis – its street value of around £180 ($281). The drugs were inside the pouch and wrapped in plastic.
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Royal Navy seizes more than three tonnes of cocaine valued at £500million

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As indicated by the National Crime Agency (NCA), initially two tonnes were found and, later another one tonne was discovered. In the opinion of experts, if cut and sold in the UK, it would have had a likely potential street value of over £500 million based on its purity. It seems the drug was sourced in South America and loaded onto the boat in the Canary Islands. Incidentally, Britain is believed to be one of Europe’s largest and most profitable markets for the drug. Estimates indicate that nearly 25 to 30 tons of cocaine is annually smuggled into the UK.

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Cocaine worth £1million in bag of holidaymaker on flight from Dominican Republic to French Riviera

#cocaine #drugmule #NiceAirport #drugsmugglers #FrenchRiviera A tourist became an unsuspecting drug mule when Directorate-General of Customs in France discovered 18 packages of cocaine weighing 46lbs (21-Kg) stuffed inside a suitcase that was abandoned on the baggage carousel. The suitcase had the name of the tourist on it but it did not belong to him.
This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 4 April 2015.

The tentative value of the illicit drugs was more than €1.3million (£950,000) in street value and the stuff were in a suitcase that arrived at the airport in Nice on a flight from the Dominican Republic.
Customs officers detained the individual who was waiting for his luggage at the airport and after interrogation were convinced that the bag did not belong to him and that he had nothing to do with the smuggling of drugs.
The investigators believe that this could be the handiwork of smugglers in the Dominican Republic who would have filled the suitcase with cocaine and used the tourist’s identity. Their intention could have been to sneak the drugs into France through Nice Cote d’Azur International Airport.
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