DRUG TUNNEL - SOURCES SAYS CONDUIT NOT JUST FOR POT

Plans For Ecstasy As Well

Three Surrey men who allegedly spent more than a year digging a drug
tunnel under the border to the U.S. planned to use it for smuggling
ecstacy as well as marijuana, American authorities say.

Francis Raj, 30, Timothy Woo, 34, and Jonathan Valenzuela, 27, were
charged Thursday in U.S. court with conspiracy to smuggle and
distribute marijuana, an offence carrying a minimum 10-year prison
sentence.

The trio dug the 110-metre passageway with hand shovels while under
constant surveillance, and smuggled to the U.S. two shipments of
Vancouver-produced pot, totalling 90 kilograms, allege authorities,
who intercepted the shipments in Washington.

Ecstacy-smuggling information came from an undercover operation by
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement this spring, targeting a
Canadian man believed to have smuggled ecstacy into the U.S. The man
told the undercover agent the tunnelers would use their secret conduit
for transportation of pot and ecstacy, the complaint says. It says he
also told the agent that they planned to charge drug traffickers $500
a pound, and that they could run loads of 300 pounds at a time.

The tunnel was a stone's throw from the Aldergrove border station. The
location was "advantageous," because border patrols expect to find
smugglers in more secluded areas, said Organized Crime Agency of B.C.
Insp. Pat Fogarty.

The tunnel ran between a Quonset hut on property bought by Raj in
Aldergrove in March 2004 and an unoccupied two-storey house in Lynden,
Wash., owned by a couple now subject to a criminal investigation.
Whatcom County records identify the property's owners as Raman and
Kusum Patel.