COLOMBIA SEIZES 30 'COCAINE TRADE GANGSTERS'

The ringleaders of a drug trafficking network alleged to have shipped up to
30 tonnes of cocaine a month to Europe and the United States have been
arrested in Colombia

The arrests were hailed as the best example yet of improving co-operation
with Colombian police. As many as 30 people were held, including several
former members of the Medellin cartel. They are likely to be extradited to
stand trial in Miami, Colombian officials said.

American officials described the group as a Who's Who of the drug trade and
"the most significant and dangerous collection of traffickers and
money-launderers" since the Medellin and Cali cartels that dominated the
drug scene in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Huge shipments aboard fishing vessels and containers were smuggled through
Central America, Mexico and the Bahamas to at least ten American states,
according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Agents estimate the
profits at up to $5 billion a month.

"It is as if we have removed the chief executives of several major
corporations who had joined together in a major conspiracy," Janet Reno,
the US Attorney-General, said.

General Jose Serrano, the Colombian police chief, described the arrests as
"a perfect operation - zero corruption, zero leaks". Although most of the
information was obtained in the United States, around 200 Colombian police
officers were involved in the arrests. Police also made arrests in Mexico
and Ecuador.

While the drugs were shipped from Colombia, the main nerve centre of the
operation was in Miami, which one senior American official said "continues
to be the centre of command, control, intelligence and money" to the
traffickers. "South Florida is to the drug trade what Silicon Valley is to
the computer industry," Thomas Scott, the US Attorney in Miami, said.

The group is said to have used encrypted telephones, cloned cellular phones
and the Internet to try to avoid detection. The close co-operation between
Colombian police and the American counter-drug agents could serve as a
boost to Colombian officials, who are seeking $1.5 billion aid from
Washington to assist in the war on drugs.

Opponents of the aid say that such a financial commitment could drag the
United States deeper into Colombia's bloody conflict. The drug trade in
Colombia is widely believed to finance the country's left-wing guerrillas
and right-wing paramilitaries.

The arrests in Colombia, particularly of Alejandro Bernal and Fabio Ochoa,
represented the most damage done to the country's cartels since the capture
of the Cali organisation's leaders in 1995, officials said. They said that
the year-long investigation, dubbed Operation Millennium, involved numerous
wiretaps and the seizure of about 13 tonnes of cocaine.

US and Colombian authorities described Bernal as the ringleader and as one
of the most significant international traffickers now operating.
Authorities said that he had bragged that his operation moved as much as 30
tonnes of cocaine each month into the United States.

Ochoa was a leader of the Medellin cartel in the 1980s before surrendering
to the Colombian police in 1991 and serving about five years of an
eight-year prison term.

American officials said that the arrests could make a significant dent in
the flow of drugs, but analysts were more sceptical. "It is a mistake to
look at this as something that marks a major step in the drug war," Michael
Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue,
said. "It is not going to make a difference in American cities that a few
Colombians are going to be extradited to the US."