cocaine

Araya is the 16th drug smuggler nabbed at Juan Santamaría International Airport so far this year. He was the second Costa Rican arrested with drugs; the other suspected smugglers were all foreign nationals.

Suspected Colombian drug cartel leader Joel Jermain Branford was quietly extradited to the United States from Costa Rica last week, where he is wanted on international drug trafficking charges, an official at Costa Rica's Prosecutor's Office confirmed on Monday.

The amount of cocaine Costa Rica confiscated last year is more than half the amount seized in the previous four years combined. The successful Tico approach has made the country the region’s leader in drug confiscation and in cracking down on both local and international narco-structures, the DEA claims.

Tuesday afternoon a U.S. surveillance plane spotted a suspicious ship 36 nautical miles off the coast of Quepos, Puntarenas that ended up carrying at least 810 kilograms of cocaine, according to a Public Security Ministry statement Wednesday. One of the traffickers had a sizable rap sheet, including extortion and aggravated robbery.

Arrested with more than 3 kilograms of cocaine in his suitcase, the tourist becomes the first drug mule caught in Costa Rica this year, according to the Public Security Ministry.

After at least two significant cocaine seizures from shipping containers in Europe that originated in Costa Rica during 2014, the government has yet to bring online two X-ray scanners donated six years ago at its Limón port.

Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa on Monday reported that joint patrols in recent weeks by the U.S. and Costa Rican coast guards have netted almost 1.5 metric tons of cocaine and led to the arrest of 11 suspects.

As the latest seizure of cocaine at the Peñas Blancas border crossing was tallied Tuesday morning, Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa announced that Costa Rica's annual haul of the illicit drug is set to exceed 26 metric tons this year, breaking 2013’s record of 21.8 metric tons.

It probably should have been a red flag for the drug trafficker that when two police officers tried to arrest him they were driving a Honda Civic.

The latest annual estimate came during the announcement of two seizures over the weekend totaling more than 600 kilos of cocaine in Peñas Blancas, the country’s only land border crossing with Nicaragua.