Found this on my home page news section today. Thought it might be of
some interest


US law fights submarine-like boats hauling cocaine
Email this Story

Apr 5, 1:05 PM (ET)

By FRANK BAJAK

BOGOTA (AP) - It's a game played out regularly on the high seas off
Colombia's Pacific coast: A U.S. Navy helicopter spots a vessel the size
of a humpback whale gliding just beneath the water's surface.

A Coast Guard ship dispatches an armed team to board the small,
submarine-like craft in search of cocaine. Crew members wave and jump
into the sea to be rescued, but not before they open flood valves and
send the fiberglass hulk and its cargo into the deep.

Colombia has yet to make a single arrest in such scuttlings because the
evidence sinks with the so-called semi-submersible.

A new U.S. law and proposed legislation in Colombia aim to thwart what
has become South American traffickers' newest preferred means of getting
multi-ton loads to Mexico and Central America.

Twelve people have been arrested under the Drug Trafficking Vessel
Interdiction Act of 2008 since it went into effect in October. It
outlaws such unregistered craft plying international waters "with the
intent to evade detection." Crew members are subject to up to 15 years
in prison.

"It's very likely a game-changer," said Jay Bergman, the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration's regional director, based in Colombia. "You
don't get a get-out-of-jail free card anymore."

The law faces legal challenges, though. The defendants have filed
pretrial motions saying it violates due process and is an
unconstitutional application of the so-called High Seas clause, which
allows U.S. prosecution of felonies at sea.

The vessels, hand-crafted in coastal jungle camps from fiberglass and
wood, have become the conveyance of choice for large loads, humping
nearly a third of U.S.-bound cocaine northward through the Pacific, said
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich, commander of the Joint Interagency
Task Force-South based in Key West, Fla.

That's up from just 14 percent in 2007, according to the task force,
which oversees interdiction south of the United States.

Colombian Navy chief Adm. Guillermo Barrera told a counterterrorism
conference in Bogota last week that 23 semi-submersibles capable of
carrying between 4 and 10 metric tons each have been seized in the past
three years.

Though semi-submersibles aren't new to cocaine transport, a bigger,
sleeker, more sophisticated variety that average about 60 feet (18
meters) in length began emerging three years ago. Earlier versions,
christened "floating coffins," couldn't compete with fishing trawlers
and speed boats known as "go-fasts" for maritime transport of drugs.

But drug agents started policing trawlers better, leading traffickers to
new methods.

With just over a foot of above-water clearance and V-shaped prows
designed to leave minimal wakes, semi-submersibles are nearly impossible
for surface craft to detect visually or by radar outside a range of
about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters.)

That accounts for their relatively high success rate.

They are propelled by 250 to 350 horsepower diesel engines and take
about a week averaging 7 knots (8 mph) to reach Mexico's shores,
Colombian and U.S. investigators said.

Fuel tanks carry about 3,000 gallons of diesel, so no refueling is
needed on the 2,000-mile journey from Colombia north.

With cocaine in Mexico fetching $6,500 per kilo - about triple the
Colombian price, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration -
an average 7-metric-ton load yields $30 million.

Crews have no problem scuttling the vessels after off-loading their
cargo, investigators say. The roughly $1 million spent on each craft is
simply written off as the cost of doing business.

Though authorities caught 11 semi-subs last year in international waters
off the Pacific - with 7 tons of cocaine seized in one off Mexico in
September - they estimate from intelligence and interdiction that
another 60 delivered their cargo, Nimmich said.

About the same amount will get through this year, predicts Adm. James
Stavridis, the U.S. Southern Command chief. He told a mid-March U.S.
Senate hearing they would have a potential cargo capacity of over 330
metric tons.

So far this year, crews sunk five semi-subs off Colombia's coast after
being pursued by drug enforcers.

Two of the crews were arrested, plus a third one plucked out of the
Pacific on Dec. 31 about 100 miles off Colombia. All are being tried in
a Tampa, Fla., federal court, said Joseph Ruddy, the assistant U.S.
attorney prosecuting them.

Semi-subs confiscated on land in Colombia since 2007 have given
authorities a good glimpse into the state of the art.

In November, authorities arrested a man they consider the most ingenious
semi-sub builder. Tammer Portocarrero, a rotund 45-year-old, used a
shrimp boat fleet as cover, said Capt. Luis German Borrero, the navy
chief in the Pacific port of Buenaventura at the time.

They seized two of his subs at a jungle shipyard in a remote estuary
south of Buenaventura, Borrero said.

Portocarrero, whose extradition the United States has requested,
allegedly began building vessels as early as mid-2007, as well as
recruiting crews.

The made-to-order vessels have become increasingly sophisticated.
Engines and exhaust systems are typically shielded to make their heat
signatures nearly invisible to infrared sensors used by U.S. and allied
aircraft trying to find them.

The cooling system of a semi-sub seized off Costa Rica in September
piped engine exhaust through the hull and discharged it at ambient
temperature, Nimmich said.

Unfortunately for crews, such design sophistication doesn't extend to
their quarters.

"The conditions are terrible," Borrero said. "They don't have bathrooms.
The beds are two mattresses draped over the fuel tanks, and the pilot
can barely see through very small windows" in mini-cabin.

"The noise and heat must be something infernal," he added.

In a report provided to The Associated Press, Colombia's domestic
intelligence agency said a four-person crew was sharing a payoff of
about $50,000 per trip before the new U.S. law. Crews now demand about
25 percent more because of the higher risk of getting caught, U.S. law
enforcement officials say.

GPS location devices and satellite phones are standard onboard
equipment, and the technology is expected to advance.

Law enforcement officials say they already have unconfirmed reports of
robotic semi-subs in action.

And with such vessels, Nimmich said, it's not drug smuggling that
worries him, but a larger potential for peril:

"I think that what makes semi-submersibles a larger national security
threat is: What else can they carry?"