DRUG TUNNEL: ECSTACY EN ROUTE TO AMERICA

There were plans to ferry ecstacy as well as pot through the tunnel that
connected Aldergrove to Lynden, Wash., officials say.

More news is surfacing from Aldergrove's now infamous drug tunnel, which
was shut down by American and Canadian authorities last week.

The tunnel was to be used not only to smuggle marijuana, U.S. authorities
said, but also to transport ecstacy.

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.

Authorities revealed details of the tunnel to the public on Thursday
[Tunnel creates national threat, July 22, Langley Advance].

The 110-metre (360-foot) tunnel was dug from a property in the 26800-block
of Zero Avenue in Langley to a home at 151 East Boundary Rd. in Lynden, Wash.

The 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 transporting 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 ran between a Quonset hut on property owned by Raj and an
unoccupied two-storey house in Lynden, owned by a couple now subject to a
criminal investigation.

Whatcom County records identify the property's owners as Raman and Kusum Patel.

- - with files from The Province