TRINIDAD POLICE SEIZE $33 MILLION WORTH OF COCAINE

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (Reuters) - Police said they have made Trinidad's
largest single drug haul, seizing cocaine with a street value estimated at
$33 million disguised as a food shipment bound for Miami.

Nineteen men and women, including three brothers and a sister, appeared in
a Port of Spain court on Wednesday charged with trafficking 1,120 pounds of
cocaine. All were refused bail.

Police said the cocaine was found in sealed plastic bags marked ``Frozen
Cassava'' which were to have been exported to Miami. They were packed into
layers of crushed cassava then vacuum-sealed, according to police.

The accused were arrested at a warehouse in Carapichima in central Trinidad.

The raid followed the seizure of 575 pounds of cocaine in a container of
fish in Miami last month and the arrest of three Trinidadian nationals.
Police staked out sites in Trinidad as result.

Colombia drug smugglers use the island as a ship stop-over point for
cocaine and heroin bound for North America and Europe.