Coast Guard vessels from both countries detained two fishing boats transporting drugs and another transporting fuel barrels, suspected of supplying smuggling boats.
The raids and arrests were the culmination of a Drug Control Police investigation into a group that allegedly trafficked drugs and cash across the Peñas Blancas border crossing with Nicaragua and on to Guatemala and Honduras.
There’s 1 metric ton less of Jamaican "high red” marijuana destined for Costa Rica after authorities seized a boatload of the drug off the coast of Limón on Sunday, according to a statement from the Public Security Ministry.
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.
Police operations carried out by the Public Security Ministry during 2014 resulted in the seizure of seven tons of processed marijuana and the elimination of 872,923 marijuana plants, Minister Celso Gamboa reported on Tuesday.
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.
In the last voting of Tuesday's full legislative session, lawmakers approved docking permission for 44 U.S. Coast Guard vessels that will conduct joint-patrol operations with Costa Rican authorities from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2015.
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.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Dutch customs officers confiscated over three tons of cocaine stashed in a container of cassava roots in Rotterdam harbor, the second largest haul to date for Europe's largest port, prosecutors said Sunday.
OIJ official: “Victims are being tortured or mutilated, and most of these crimes occur in the streets. Previously we had information of at least six organized groups operating in Desamparados, but our intelligence now says that these gangs have merged into two major groups that are disputing control of the area.”
