TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Drug-Toting Semi-Sub Nabbed In Tampa-Based Probe

Navy

The Coast Guard seized the vessel about 350 miles west of Guatemala on Saturday.

ADVERTISEMENT

By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2008

Updated: 09/15/2008 04:59 pm

Working as part of a Tampa-based investigation, the Coast Guard this weekend seized a semi-submarine with 7 tons of cocaine aboard about 350 miles west of Guatemala in the eastern Pacific Ocean, officials said.

"This was the most dangerous operation of my career," Lt. j.g. Todd Bagetis, officer in charge of Coast Guard law enforcement detachment 404, says in a written statement issued by the Coast Guard.

A Navy aircraft directed the Coast Guard detachment aboard the USS McInerney in the dark Saturday to a position where it could launch two small boats near the semi-sub.

Coast Guard law enforcement detachment 404 boarded the vessel in the pre-dawn darkness, surprising the smugglers, and knocked on the hatch, officials said.

When the smugglers realized the Coast Guard was on the deck, they could be heard threatening to kill them, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ruddy. They reversed the engines at high speed to throw the boarding team into the propellers and the sea.

They managed to hang on, Ruddy said. The smugglers also tried to scuttle the craft but complied with orders from the boarding team to close the valves that were flooding it.

"This just exemplifies the dangers involved," Ruddy said, "the sophistication of this vessel."

The 59-foot-long, steel and fiberglass, self-propelled, semi-submersible craft was detected by a Navy aircraft as part of Operation Panama Express, a Tampa-based international drug investigation aimed at Latin American maritime cocaine traffickers, according to the Coast Guard and Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Tampa.

Just a few years ago a novelty, the semi-subs, which travel 99 percent below the surface of the sea, are becoming the method of choice for drug lords to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Ruddy has said.

The latest seizure was the sixth for the United States, Ruddy said. All the crew members are prosecuted in federal court in Tampa. Those who have been sentenced have received punishments ranging from nine years to 17 years and six months in federal prison.

The vessels are becoming so common, a bill has been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives to make it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison just to be on one, regardless of whether there are drugs onboard. That's because authorities think the only purpose for the vessels is to smuggle drugs. The bill is awaiting action by the Senate. Although an earlier version of the bill had called for the penalty to be up to 20 years in prison, a later amendment changed the maximum penalty.

Ruddy said the danger exemplified by the latest case was one of the reasons behind the proposed law.

A defense to the crime, Ruddy said, will be whether the vessel is registered with a foreign government. The smuggling vessels are made to avoid detection, so they typically do not register with any country.

Ruddy has said a semi-sub has as many as three scuttle valves that the crew can open to sink the vessel when it is spotted, sometimes leaving investigators no choice but to rescue crewmen and later release them, with the evidence lost at sea.

Investigators spotted four to six other semi-subs by air in the past year, but by the time officials got close enough, the vessels had been scuttled.

According to the Coast Guard, the vessel seized Saturday is capable of traveling from South America to San Diego without stopping for fuel or supplies. The vessel also is reported to be equipped with state-of-the-art navigation and communications equipment.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT