Biggest Bogotá marijuana seizure in a decade: 5.9 tonnes
Police seized 5,879 kg of marijuana and captured six people in three operations across Bogotá on 23 April 2013, which police called the capital's biggest confiscation in ten years. The load had come from Cauca and was allegedly bound for street-level dealers.
Police seized5,879 kg of marijuana and captured six people in three operations in different parts of Bogotá on Tuesday 23 April 2013.[1][2]Police called it the biggest confiscation of marijuana in the capital in ten years and valued the load at more than a million dollars on the street.[1][2]
The largest find was 3,821 kg hidden between thick walls in a warehouse in Bosa, where two men were captured.[2]In Engativá police stopped a truck carrying 1,808 kg and captured its driver, and in Usaquén in the north they took 250 kg from a vehicle and captured its three occupants.[2]Colombia Reports, citing the police report, describes the raids as targeting micro-trafficking structures in the Bronx area under Operación República III.[1]
Police said the marijuana came from the violent department of Cauca, where the FARC guerrillas are strong and allegedly owned the load, and that it was meant for places selling in small retail quantities.[2]The operations followed President Juan Manuel Santos’s 1 April order to wipe out 24 big open drug markets, known as ollas, in 20 cities within 60 days.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
One account describes the raids as taking place in the Bronx area under Operación República III while the other names Bosa, Engativá and Usaquén without mentioning the Bronx.
A separate 5,340 kg seizure in the southwest the previous weekend belongs to another report and is left out here.
No charges or court outcome for the six captured people were reported.
Army troops seized 1,700 kilograms of pressed marijuana from a van in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca, capturing one person after a pursuit from a military checkpoint. The Third Division attributed the load to the FARC dissidents' Dagoberto Ramos structure and valued the loss to it at more than 425 million pesos.
Colombian army, navy and police units seized about 2,700 kilograms of suspected marijuana from a bongo remolcador river boat at the Hong Kong wharf in Puerto Asís, Putumayo. Authorities linked the load to the Segunda Marquetalia dissidence's Comandos de Frontera, without naming suspects or giving a value.
Colombian police stopped a vehicle in the urban area of Chinchiná, Caldas, carrying 520 kilograms of marijuana and arrested the person caught in the act, immobilising a car with altered identification systems. President Abelardo de la Espriella announced the haul as part of two operations, the other being 358 kilograms of cocaine found in generators at the port of Cartagena.
Colombian National Police investigators seized 7,452 grams of marijuana in the Los Quindos neighbourhood of Armenia, Quindío, along with 98 boxes of clonazepam. Police said the marijuana was meant for sale in minimum doses at sales points around the city and handed the drugs to the local prosecutor's office; no arrests were reported.
