SMUGGLERS' SUBMARINE SURFACES IN THE ANDES

Colombian Police Say High-Tech Sub Built For Cocaine

FACATATIVA, Colombia (Associated Press) -- A sophisticated submarine being
built by Colombian drug-traffickers was discovered high up in the Andes,
police said.

Police reported they stumbled upon the half-built 30-metre-long submarine
Wednesday in a warehouse outside the capital Bogota - 2,300 metres up in
the Andes mountains and about 340 kilometres from any port.

"In the 30-some odd years I have been in law enforcement I have never seen
anything like this," Leo Arreguin, chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration in Colombia, said yesterday.

"We're talking about being able to load up to 200 tonnes of cocaine in this
submarine."

Police chief Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert said that once the drug sub was
completed, it would have been broken up and brought to Colombia's Pacific
or Caribbean coast where it would have been riveted back together and launched.

Gilibert estimated that the submarine would have had the capacity to carry
at least 150 metric tons of cocaine or heroin on any given voyage out of
Colombia.

"This was undoubtedly going to serve to take a lot of this country's
cocaine overseas," Gilibert said.

Police were led to the find by suspicious area residents, who had seen
foreigners hanging around the warehouse in a cow pasture off a highway near
the Bogota suburb Facatativa.

When police arrived, no one was present. Surveillance cameras had been
placed on the roof. No arrests have been made.

"This is very high-tech," said Colombian navy Capt. Ismael Idrobo, gazing
up at the reddish sub, which stood in three sections on lengths of railway
track.

"Look at the rudders and the pressurized double hull. This could easily
travel 100 metres under the surface of the ocean."

Navy Capt. Fidel Azula, a former submarine captain and member of the
Colombian joint chiefs of staff, said the navy lacks the knowledge to build
such a vessel.

"This is unmistakably of superb naval construction," he said.

Arreguin said seized documents, including blueprints, contained
Russian-sounding names. There were indications Russian engineers were
involved, including "a very professional engineer who has constructed
submarines before," Arreguin said.

The Russian mafia has become increasingly involved in cocaine-trafficking
to Europe, Arreguin said.

Years ago, Colombians drug traffickers were reported to have tried buying,
through intermediaries, a military submarine from the Kremlin's fleet as
the Soviet Union collapsed.

Scattered about the warehouse were welding tools, propane tanks, hardhats,
tool boxes and knee pads and a Grainger Tools catalogue from the United States.

Previously, smugglers have outfitted passenger planes and ships to
transport drugs and even built some tiny "submersibles" to ferry drugs to a
mother ship. But they were mere contraptions compared with this sub, which
measured nearly 3.5 metres in diameter.

The seizure was reminiscent of a 1994 case in which two mini-subs used by
Colombian drug traffickers were seized off the Caribbean port of Santa Marta.

Colombia is estimated to supply about 80 per cent of the world's cocaine
and much of the heroin sold on U.S. streets.