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How Does Cocaine Get Out of Colombia?

This month's photo is of a NARCOSUBMARINO - a drug submarine. At last count, nine of these babies had been discovered, although this one is the most interesting because of its size, design and location. It was seized in 2000 in a small town on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia's capital, which is 16 hours by road to the coast and 2600 metres above sea level. Strange place to build a submarine.

Reports say it belongs to Alex DeCubas, a Cuban trafficker who was part of the original PEPES (Colombian militia group that hunted down Pablo Escobar), he was considered part of the “new-generation” mafia, wanted for 13 years by the DEA for killing an undercover agent in Puerto Rico, he was finally caught in Medellin and extradited to USA. This submarine was 30 metres long, 3.5 metres wide, had capacity for 12 people and between 150 and 200 tonnes of cocaine. An estimated five million dollars had been invested when it was decommissioned. It would have needed another 5 million dollars in instruments and machinery to get it running. The plans and construction documents were translated from Russian into Spanish. Documents indicated the involvement of Russians and Americans in its construction. A DEA agent said that in 32 years of work, he had “never seen anything like it”.

So next time your line of cocaine tastes of salt water rather than condom rubber, you'll know why.

Photo by Niels Van Iperen www.niels.com

Text by Rusty Young, www.marchingpowder.com

www.niels.com

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