COLOMBIA: Police uncover cocaine haul hidden in fake lumber

Colombian authorities discovered a tonne of cocaine worth 25 million US dollars camouflaged in fake wooden beams on Wednesday (October 04) in Bogota. The cocaine was carefully hidden inside airtight containers disguised as wooden planks kept inside a warehouse in a Northern Bogota neighborhood. "We have 34 wooden blocks containing a considerable amount of coca, that's what we found in this hold," explained the head of the city police, Hector Daniel Castiblanco. "The cocaine is packed in wooden beams, or what it appears to be a wooden beam but is in fact a hermetic, sealed, solid block," said Castiblanco. The owner of the warehouse is under investigation. In the last few years, Washington has pumped millions of dollars of military aid into Colombia to help President Alvaro Uribe fight the country's huge drug-trafficking trade and the Marxist rebels authorities say use narcotics to finance their insurgency. Colombia remains the world's No. 1 cocaine exporter despite Uribe's U.S.-backed campaign to crack down on the drug trade and left-wing rebels fighting a four-decade insurgency against the state.

ITN Source | October 5, 2006

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