Three Ecuadorians sentenced in Costa Rica for drug trafficking

Costa Rican courts have sentenced three Ecuadorians, who were captured a year ago with a cocaine shipment, to eight years of prison for drug trafficking.

The three men were subject to a short trial after pleading guilty to the charges against them, the Public Ministry stated in a press release on Friday.

The South Americans were identified as Jorge Bolívar Chaves and the brothers Mario and José Luis Palma González, who served a preventive prison sentence while awaiting their trial.

The three were detained on Sept. 2, 2016 in Jacó in the Central Pacific of Costa Rica after fleeing from Coast Guard, which had detected them in a boat with a shipment of 331 kilos of cocaine.

A great quantity of the cocaine seized by Costa Rican authorities passes through the country’s Pacific slope, where the Coast Guard operates with information collected by U.S. reconnaissance planes.