MEXICO:THE CAPTURE was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine, writes Ken Ellingwood.
The 10m (33ft) vessel turned out to be crammed with parcels believed to contain cocaine, possibly tonnes. Its dishevelled crew of four emerged in stocking feet and baggy shorts, saying they had shipped out from Colombia a week earlier under threat of death.
Mexico's military confirmed on Thursday that the men are Colombian, but offered little new information on its capture of the mini-sub off the southern coast a day earlier.
Captain Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican navy, said authorities were hauling the "very well constructed" vessel to shore and had yet to weigh the contraband, which he said likely amounted to "tonnes." The unusual episode suggests that the government, already struggling against drug traffickers by land and air, faces a vexing, new undersea front.
Colombian drug suppliers have increasingly tried to use small, semi-submersible craft to smuggle their illicit cargo north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the United States.
Colombian forces and the US coast guard have seized more than a dozen such boats, a handful while en route to Mexico and Central America, during the past two and a half years.
US officials say the craft are being used more often because they are more difficult to detect by radar. The seizures represent a fraction of the 40 or so that have been spotted since 2007, according to US authorities.
"When they think they might be caught, the crews tend to scuttle them," said Jose Ruiz, spokesman for the US southern command in Miami, which monitors drug activities. "They get out of them, sink them, and the drugs go to the bottom of the ocean so they can't be recovered for evidence."
Wednesday's seizure of the olive, surfboard-shaped vessel, in the Pacific ocean about 200km (125mls) from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, was the first off the coast of Mexico, authorities said. The seizure provided images of speeding navy patrol boats and adrenaline-charged commandos perched atop the vessel - a showy victory for President Felipe Calderon and his 18-month-old crackdown against drug trafficking gangs.
That offensive has sent 45,000 federal troops and police agents into the streets along the US border and other key drug-smuggling corridors.
Drug gangs have ratcheted up their capabilities by adding grenades and bazookas to their arsenals and, authorities say, outfitting cars with bombs for possible use against government forces.
Now authorities apparently face a maritime weapon as smuggling gangs seek ways to move their product to the US. The Mexican navy said in a statement its forces moved in on the vessel after receiving intelligence from "national and international agencies."
Capt Vergara declined to elaborate on the source of the intelligence or how the vessel was tracked. In a television interview, he said that although such vessels can evade radar by staying just below the surface, they're easy to spot from the air because they cannot go deep.
The crew members told the media they left the port city of Buenaventura, on Colombia's Pacific coast, seven days earlier. If so, they had travelled at least 2,092km (1,300mls) before their capture.
The men, ranging in age from their 20s to late 50s, said they were fishermen who had been kidnapped and forced to make the journey by men who threatened their families. The sailors said that they were unaware of the contents or destination of the craft, which they said was guided by a satellite navigation system. It was unclear how much control they had over the sub.
"They told us we had to take [ the sub] where they sent us," suspect Rafael Jimenez (27) was quoted in the Reforma newspaper as saying. The suspects said they were to be paid $500 each.
Officials believe that at least some of the boats have been built at the behest of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the rebel army widely considered the country's leading drug trafficker.
The homemade vessels have become increasingly sophisticated, with self-propelled models powered by 350-horsepower diesel engines and equipped with communication systems and ballast that make them hard to spot. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)