Drug factory raided

Press, 21 July 1986, Page 10

Drug factory raided

NZPA-Reuter Trinidad, Bolivia A second operation of Bolivia’s anti-drug drive, done with American military helicopters, had turned up no cocaine or cocaine processing equipment, a Government spokesman said yesterday. The Under-Secretary of Public Information, Mr Irving Alcaraz, said he had no details of the second raid.

An airlift of supplies and equipment from the capital, La Paz, to the cocaine drive base at Trinidad, 415 km to the north, continued yesterday with the arrival of several Bolivian Air Force Hercules cargo planes, other Bolivian aircraft, and at least one United States twin-engine turbo-prop plane. United States Army officers at the base camp at the Trinidad airport declined comment on the operations or the preparations for raids. All information had to come from Bolivian authorities, they said. As the drive began on Saturday, members of Bolivia’s elite United States-trained “Leopard”

anti-drugs police unit raided what is believed to be Bolivia’s largest cocaine factory. The factory is along an airstrip in an isolated Amazon jungle area 100 km north of the city of Santa Ana, in the northern Yacuma, Mr Alcaraz said. Santa Ana is believed to be a base of operations for the Bolivian "cocaine king,” Roberto Suarez. The factory was a sophisticated affair capable of refining up to 1500 kg of cocaine a week from a paste made from coca leaf, officials said. Its output was a significant portion of Bolivia’s exports. The factory was surrounded by 12 buildings including a hangar for small aircraft, air-condi-tioned houses, a restaurant, a playground for children, and a basketball court.

The troops detained one man and confiscated a machine-gun, a rifle and a small aircraft with drug processing chemicals. The aircraft was registered to a Santa Ana man who was apparently a member of Suarez’s gang, Mr Alcaraz

said. In the capital, La Paz, Dr Victor Paz Estenssoro’s Centre-Right Government said it would burn all the cocaine seized in the raids and would turn over confiscated aircraft and boats to the armed forces.

Drug traffickers use more than 200 clandestine airstrips, some with landing lights for night flights, police say. The coca leaf crop, converted into coca paste, is flown mainly to Colombia and Brazil for refining, although some cocaine is now being produced at Bolivian plants like the one taken on Saturday.

Bolivian officials have said that the “Leopards,” backed by six United States Black Hawk helicopters and 160 military technical support personnel, were planning raids mostly on big drug trafficking operations, not on coca leaf farmers.

Bolivia, one of the poorest nations in Latin America, is believed to export cocaine valued at 3U53.3 billion, more than six times the nation’s total legal exports.