POLICE CLOSE IN ON DRUG TUNNEL RINGLEADERS

Canadian Higher-Ups

VANCOUVER - Investigators are closing in on the Canadian ringleaders of a
drug-trafficking group operating through a cross-border tunnel, a U.S.
special agent said yesterday, as U.S. authorities began filling in the
underground passageway.

"There are definitely higher-level members that have been identified in
Canada," said Special Agent Rodney Benson of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Authorities expect to make arrests in the near future, he said.

Three Canadian men were arrested July 20 and charged in the United States
with drug offences after allegedly spending more than a year using hand
shovels to dig the 110-metre passageway from an Aldergrove Quonset hut to a
Lynden, Wash., home.

U.S. authorities yesterday began digging out a section of tunnel beneath a
road, to fill the lumber-reinforced, 1.2-metre-wide and 1.2-metre-tall
corridor with dirt, gravel and cement .

Langley Township will fill the Canadian portion with 120 cubic metres of
fast-hardening concrete one day next week, at a cost of $30,000.

Township officials intend to take legal action so when the Aldergrove
property is sold, proceeds equivalent to tunnel-destruction costs will go
to the municipality.

"We'll recover the taxpayers' money," said township engineer Clive Roberts.

Mr. Benson would not reveal the size of the organized-crime group, but said
it was "very significant.

"They're well organized, well funded. They operate in the U.S., Canada and
other countries."

Canadian and U.S. agencies are working together to break up the ring,
targeting leaders, major transporters, "distribution cells" and money
handlers, he said.

"We look at the whole picture and take out the largest piece of that
criminal organization possible," Mr. Benson said.

Francis Raj, 30, Timothy Woo, 34, and Jonathan Valenzuela, 27 are slated to
go on trial in Washington Sept. 26 on charges of smuggling marijuana and
conspiring to distribute the drug. They face minimum 10-year prison sentences.

The DEA alleges the group brought through the tunnel from British Columbia
to Washington two loads of Vancouver-grown pot totalling 90 kilograms, and
that they planned to charge $500 a pound to bring future shipments across.

A Canadian drug trafficker told an undercover U.S. Customs agent the tunnel
was also to be used for smuggling ecstacy, the DEA said.

Canadian law enforcement agencies are assisting in the U.S. prosecution of
the accused men.

"We're certainly part of the significant evidence chain that will help
sustain convictions against those individuals," said RCMP Inspector Al Mullin.

"I think the evidence, personally, is overwhelming."

Cooperative intelligence-gathering between Canadian and U.S. agencies will
continue to be a primary weapon against cross-border smuggling, including
the possible construction of other tunnels, Insp. Mullin said.

"There's a lot of very interesting technology out there," he said. "We have
to maximize modern technology to the limit."

The tunnelers were under surveillance from the time they started
excavating, authorities say.

Two U.S. citizens, Camille McCoy and Micah Kelly, have been charged with
possession of marijuana with intent to distribute it. The DEA says each
picked up a load of pot brought through the tunnel.