After two months of investigation, Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) officials seized 2.2 metric tons of cocaine and arrested eight alleged members of a Mexican-headed drug-trafficking ring they believe was in the process of transporting the drugs through San José to the United States.
“One can assume that Costa Rica is actually a drug storage point” for traffickers, said OIJ Assistant Director Francisco Segura during a press conference yesterday announcing the bust, the second biggest in Costa Rica this year.
Raids on the network's storage rooms and houses in the western suburbs of Pavas and Rohmorser and in Heredia, north of San José, as well as a microbus that was loaded with 640 kilos of cocaine, yielded an AK-47 rifle, an unspecified amount of cash, two automobiles and two trucks.
Segura said the group was planning to ship these drugs to the United States by hiding them in the ceiling of a semi-truck on the next leg of the smuggling route. Authorities believe the group also had contacts in El Salvador and Mexico who were going to help smuggle the cocaine north.
Seven of those arrested are Mexican citizens, one of whom is a minor, and the other suspect arrested is Colombian. Segura said authorities are investigating whether the ring has contacts with any Mexican or Colombian drug cartels.
The arrests were made in an operation Tuesday, the day after an unrelated case in which police arrested four fishermen and seized one metric ton of cocaine from a fishing boat off the southern Pacific coast. |
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