U.S. CALLED 'PIRATES' IN COCAINE CASE

TAMPA - Seven crewmen arrested after their ship and its cargo were seized
plead not guilty in federal court.

Seven sailors arrested off the coast of Ecuador aboard a trawler allegedly
carrying almost 5 tons of cocaine and brought in irons to St. Petersburg
feel like victims of "piracy on the high seas," their attorneys said
Tuesday.

The lawyers told a federal magistrate the men are all simple fishermen who
knew nothing about their ship's hidden cargo - worth tens of millions of
dollars.

The captain, Hemino Ruiz Ibardo, is a 51-year-old Colombian who had no
formal schooling. When Coast Guard officials boarded his trawler in the
Pacific Ocean last month, he told them his crew had lost its 800 foot
fishing line at sea.

"He is a fisherman by trade," said Assistant Federal Public Defender Anthony
Martinez. "That's all he was doing on that vessel the day in question."

Daniel Castillo, one of six private lawyers appointed to the case Tuesday,
said crewman Jose Learcio Lopez told him he "felt like it was a bunch of
pirates raiding his boat."

Now Ibardo, Lopez and their shipmates are in the United States, embroiled in
a foreign legal system in a case heralded as one of the state's largest
maritime cocaine busts ever. Federal prosecutors announced the seizure
Monday, saying the cocaine was in a concrete vault in the ship's hold. Its
estimated wholesale value is $73 million.

The seven men were charged in a federal indictment with conspiracy and
possession with intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine while
aboard a vessel in waters subject to U.S. jurisdiction. The offenses carry
maximum penalties of life in prison and $4 million in fines.

After an hourlong hearing Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Mary Scriven ordered the
defendants held without bail until trial.

All seven defendants pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors have released few details about the seizure, saying it involves
an ongoing investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ruddy told Scriven
the trawler had no fishing gear and was sailing at night without lights.

The case is expected to raise thorny and perhaps precedent-setting legal
questions.

Luz Nagle, a former lawyer and judge in Colombia who now teaches at Stetson
University College of Law in Gulfport said drug interdiction in open waters
is an evolving process defined by treaties and U.N. resolutions.

The ship in this case, the Rebelde, was sailing under a Colombian flag and
was stopped about 1,300 miles from land, according to testimony Tuesday.

Under those circumstances, Nagle said, the Coast Guard would have been
required to seek Colombia's permission before boarding. The two governments
reached an agreement in 1997 ending a six-year stalemate during which
Colombia refused to allow U.S. officials to board its citizens' vessels.

The agreement does not require U.S. officials to give Colombia investigative
details in advance. Nor does it call for written approval.

"If there is a silence of three hours, it is understood that permission is
granted," Nagle said.

It was unclear Tuesday whether approval was sought in this case. Prosecutors
deemed to comment, but the captain's attorney said the Coast Guard contacted
Colombia before breaking into the vault hiding the cocaine.

Attorneys for the defendants are also questioning the way in which their
clients were held for the 20 days it took to tow the trawler to St.
Petersburg.

Roland Hermida, who is representing crewman and cook Gustavo Montano Rivas,
said the men were shackled together in a hallway and later on an exposed
deck, "like in days gone by."

They were fed only bread and water at first and not told for two or three
days what charges they faced, Hermida said.

"My client had no intention of ever coming to this country. These
individuals were in essence hijacked in the middle of the ocean."

But Nagle said typically recognized constitutional rights do not apply in
international waters.

"The application of the U.S. Constitution stops at the border," she said,
even if the defendants were in military custody. "They [constitutional
rights] wouldn't have kicked in until they hit U.S. seas."