Belizean Police Say Narco-Traffickers Utilizing New Methods to Funnel Drugs Into the Country

BELMOPAN, Belize –Police Commissioner, Chester Williams, has confirmed that spikes had been laid across the roads to prevent law enforcement officials intercepting at least two planes carrying illegal drugs into Belize this week.

Police Commissioner, Chester Williams (file photo)The aircraft landed in Fireburn Village in the Orange Walk District, northwest of the capital and the authorities said that by the time they reached the illegal strip, the cargo and the plane had disappeared.

Williams said that the planes had been tracked from South America en route to this area.

“As we normally do, we deployed our personnel across the country in different areas and around 1.00 am (local time) on Tuesday night, one of planes hovered over the Bladen area for about 20 minutes.

“We had a team there. We believe they may have suspected that we had teams in that area and so they went to the Kanantik area and we had a team there as well so they circled there for like 10 minutes and perhaps they figured something was wrong again and they moved on and went down south,” Williams said.

He said the police later found out that the plane may have landed in the Graham Creek area, near the Belize Guatemalan border.

“Again that’s an area that is heavily vegetated and poses significant challenges to the security forces to get to that location so I believe that’s the reason why that area is chosen. I can say at this time that we have not confirmed the landing, but we have all reasons to believe that the plane did land in that area,” he said.

Williams said the police will continue to hunt down those engaged in the illegal trade acknowledging that “they have become very sophisticated.

“Obviously, you know that these narco-traffickers will do whatever they can to get their cargo from point A to point B and when these planes come they don’t have one landing spot. They have several proposed landing spots, so if one area fail, they move to another and if that fail they go to another.”

He confirmed that spikes had been laid across the roads to hamper the progress of law enforcement officials.

“The traffickers had placed spikes on the road and the spikes caused damage to all the tires of the vehicle. So that disabled the team from reaching the location within a timely manner. And by the time another vehicle came to assist and get the team to the location, the plane was found without its cargo,” Williams added.

He said three hours would have been quite reasonable if the narco-traffickers have adequate vehicle or resources to move the cargo from point A to point B.

“And you know there is a river nearby and certainly they would not move it by road, but rather via the river. And that river that is there runs all the way to Botes, Mexico”.