U.S. SEIZES 13 TONS OF COCAINE

SAN DIEGO - In the biggest cocaine seizure in U.S. maritime history,
the Coast Guard found 13 tons of the drug aboard a fishing boat that
aroused suspicion because it had no working fishing equipment and few
fish.

U.S. Attorney Gregory Vega put the drug's street value at about $500 million.

Authorities discovered the cocaine May 3 in a secret compartment on
the Belize-flagged vessel after boarding the ship about 1,500 miles
south of San Diego, federal prosecutors said Monday.

Cocaine seizures in the eastern Pacific Ocean have become
increasingly common in recent years as smugglers seek to evade law
enforcement in the Caribbean by taking advantage of the vastness of
the Pacific.

The 152-foot ship caught the attention of a U.S. Navy ship on April
28 because it lacked operable fishing equipment, had few fish, and
was outside normal fishing grounds, Coast Guard Capt. Bob Reininger
said.

After searching the vessel for five days, a crew from a Coast Guard
cutter found the cocaine under the hold.

The vessel was towed Sunday to San Diego.

The 10-man crew of the Svesda Maru - eight Ukrainians and two
Russians - was arrested. They were to be arraigned Monday on drug
conspiracy charges and could get life in prison if convicted.

Investigators believe that the 26,397 pounds of cocaine came from
Colombia and that the crew intended to deliver it to Central America
or Mexico, where it would be smuggled by land into the United States.

The smugglers on the boat must have had permission from Mexico's
Arellano-Felix drug trafficking organization to be transporting
cocaine so close to its territory, said Errol Chavez, agent in charge
of the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office.

"This is some indication that there is direct involvement or some
kind of association between Russian organized crime and members of
the Arellano-Felix organization," Chavez said.

The previous record for a cocaine seizure at sea was 24,000 pounds
from a ship called the Nataly I in 1995.

Since Oct. 1, the Coast Guard has seized 110,000 pounds of cocaine at
sea, 80 percent of it in the eastern Pacific. That rivals the 120,000
pounds found in all of fiscal 2000, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Ray Riutta
said.