SMASHING GANG BIGGER DEAL THAN COKE SEIZURE

Monday's $18-million cocaine seizure off the Eastern Shore wasn't the
RCMP's biggest catch that day, say Quebec Mounties.

The head of the force's criminal operations in Quebec said arrests made in
the case smashed a gang whose main function was to bring drugs to Canada
for others to sell.

"The largest impact here is not with the quantity of the drug (seized),
despite the fact that is a very large quantity, it is with the dismantling
of the criminal organization," Chief Supt. Antoine Couture said at a
Halifax news conference Wednesday.

"They were transport providers to other organizations. We have dismantled
their organization, which (involved) carrying, transporting, importing,
smuggling the cocaine into Canada."

Mounties on Zodiacs boarded the 15-metre sailboat Friendship on Monday
night near the White Islands, 20 kilometres off Moser River and about 100
kilometres east of Halifax.

They seized 500 kilograms of cocaine, arrested two men on the boat and
three others near Moser River who allegedly were to offload the cocaine,
plus three people in Quebec and one in Antigua. A gun and cash were also
seized.

Seven suspects are from Quebec and the others are from Antigua and
Colombia; two are women. Police said they may make more arrests.

The RCMP received help from a navy frigate and a coast guard vessel, the
Canadian Border Services Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and
police in Quebec, Halifax, Antigua and St. Martins.

Police allege the sailboat, loaded with coke from Colombia or the
Caribbean, left Antigua on June 23 and headed for the White Islands, where
other Zodiacs would have taken the drugs to a house the criminals owned in
Moser River.

"From there it would have been trucked back to Montreal," said Sgt. Andre
Potvin, lead investigator in the RCMP's Montreal drug section.

He said police were watching somebody waiting in a truck at the shoreline
near the gang-purchased house. He praised officers for a successful
stakeout that lasted several days in an isolated area.

"You really have to commend the police officers that had to work in that
environment and not be detected."

Supt. Couture said the RCMP first set out to break up the drug organization
in 1999.

"This is what we have done. It's a major setback for the organization. I
think we have really neutralized it."

He said many different police forces collaborated on the bust.

"The information was received that this group was active and had these
plans to import major quantities of cocaine.

"As soon as we identified the possibility that the merchandise will be
coming through the eastern part of the country we entered into
communications with the RCMP divisions that are located in Atlantic Canada."

Supt. Couture said the RCMP spent at least $1 million on the investigation,
dubbed Project Columbie, which was started by Montreal RCMP in July 2003.

He said only big-time dealers would be directly connected to the importers.

"They have to be organizations that are able to put on the street that
large a quantity of drugs."

Supt. Couture said the coke could have appeared on Montreal's streets
within a month.

Police think the suspects tried to arrange some earlier trips this year,
but their plans fell through.

All the suspects were flown to Montreal shortly after the bust. They will
be tried in Quebec, where a preliminary inquiry should start by fall or
early next year.

On display at the news conference were 24 one-kilogram bricks of coke, a
35-kilogram bale and two large plastic tubs, each holding about 50 bricks.

"What you see is a very small sampling of what was there," said Supt. Craig
MacLaughlan, the RCMP's criminal operations officer for Nova Scotia.

"These packets were all through the vessel, stored in very traditional
storage compartments in a vessel of that size . . . under the decks, in the
cabinetry, under the bunks."

He said it was a "significant" seizure.

"There have been larger ones and there have been smaller ones" in Nova
Scotia, said Supt. MacLaughlan.

He said Nova Scotia's geography makes it attractive to smugglers.

"We all know that there's over 7,000 kilometres of uninhabited coastline in
Nova Scotia, so obviously it leads the criminal element to our shores. It
gives them access to offload their goods and get it into other parts of
Canada."

Cmdr. Mark Norman, commanding officer of HMCS St. John's, said the sight of
his frigate approaching Friendship at speeds of 28 knots had to be
intimidating for the yacht's crew.

"It was described to me after the fact that these individuals were visibly
shocked and in awe of what had happened, and the speed with which it was
executed."

The frigate approached the sailboat behind the RCMP's boarding vessel and
later took the suspects to Halifax. Some of the ship's crew sailed the
yacht, escorted by the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Edward Cornwallis,
back to Halifax, where it is tied up at HMC Dockyard.

Although initial reports said the sailboat came from Antigua, authorities
in that country say it wasn't registered there.

The boat's stern says the Friendship is from Salem, Ore. However, the RCMP
wouldn't say where or if the yacht was registered anywhere.

"That's part of the investigation," said spokeswoman Const. Marie-Veronique
Bourque.