Peru breaks up drug trafficking ring

June 10, 2002

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Peruvian police said Monday they had broken up a major drug trafficking ring, seizing almost two tons of cocaine destined for the United States or Europe and arresting 27 people.

The gang was linked to Mexico's Tijuana cartel and had set up a fishing company in the Peruvian port of Chimbote as a front to smuggle the drugs to Mexico by sea and then on to Europe or the United States, Edy Tomasto, head of Peru's anti-drug police, told reporters.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Lima office helped with a three-month surveillance operation leading up to the bust, a police statement said.

Tomasto said police seized 3,870 pounds of refined cocaine in Chimbote, about 210 miles northwest of Lima, in the largest cocaine seizure in Peru so far this year.

He identified Miguel Morales, a Mexican, as the ring's leader. Morales, 10 Colombians, 15 Peruvians and a Guatemalan were arrested in a series of raids in Chimbote, Lima, the northern coastal city of Trujillo and the central mountain city of Ayacucho. The arrests were made from Thursday to Saturday.

As he spoke, police officers unveiled several hundred packages of the confiscated cocaine wrapped tightly in brown packing tape and stored in sacks.

The cocaine was to be ferried on small boats from Chimbote to a larger ship off Peru's coast, Tomasto said. The larger ship was still at large.

Police also uncovered a processing laboratory in the Apurimac River valley, the region in Peru's eastern Amazon jungle where most of the raw coca leaf for the cocaine originated, Tomasto said.

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