Police display record 20 tons of FARC marijuana in Santander de Quilichao
Police in Cauca presented about 20 tons of seized marijuana in Santander de Quilichao on 24 February 2010, described by the authorities as the largest marijuana seizure in Colombia's history and attributed to the FARC, with police putting its value at $2.5 million.
Police in the southwestern department of Cauca captured a record 20 tons of marijuana belonging to the FARC, the authorities said on Wednesday 24 February 2010.[1]Officers presented the seized packages to the press in Santander de Quilichao the same day; according to the authorities it was the largest marijuana seizure in Colombia’s history.[2][3]
General Gustavo Adolfo Ricaurte, who headed Colombia’s southwestern police force, said the bust had effectively dismantled the FARC’s central financial hub in the Cauca region.[1]He put the value of the seized marijuana at $2.5 million and called the site the guerrillas’ financial centre, “where they cultivated marijuana, pressed and exported it”.[1]
A separate 6.5-ton seizure that month
Police had seized 6.5 tons of marijuana in transit through Valle del Cauca in early February, but it was not known whether that shipment was also part of a FARC operation.[1]The FARC’s 30th Front trafficked drugs in Cauca and was believed to work with the Tijuana cartel in Mexico.[1]
Photos and video
Police officers guard seized packages of marijuana totalling 20 tons in Santander de Quilichao on 24 February 2010Photo details
AFP via Getty Imagesgettyimages.iePolice officers guard seized packages of marijuana totalizing 20 tons on February 24, 2010, in Santander de Quilichao
The opened sources do not say which raids produced the 20 tons or on what dates they took place, and no arrests were reported.
The contemporaneous press display also reportedly included 102 kg of coca base, which could not be confirmed in an opened source and is left out of the cannabis figures.
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.
