Colombian 'coffins' run cocaine beneath the waves

Packed with cocaine and grimly christened "coffins," sleek jungle-built submarines are steaming their way north from Colombia through Pacific waters to deliver tonnes of illegal drugs headed for the US market.

Skimming just below the water line, with only a glimpse of a glass-enclosed cockpit or metal tubes visible from above, the semi-submersibles are the latest shipment method used by trafficking cartels to try to elude detection by authorities.

A pilot and three or four crewmen squeeze into the cramped hulls of the craft on voyages from Colombia's Pacific Coast up to Central America or Mexico, where their cargoes are offloaded for shipment to the US, the Coast Guard says. There is no bathroom or galley and the heat can be searing in the narrow space the smugglers share in the stern of the craft, just a few feet away from the throbbing diesel engines.

"They call it either the coffin or the tomb," said Rear Admiral Joseph Nimmich, the officer who commands the US Coast Guard's Joint Interagency Task Force South.

"The intent is to be as low-profile, and to make it as difficult for us to find, as possible." The task force Nimmich heads, an umbrella group that includes the US military, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI and Central Intelligence Agency, focuses on monitoring and detecting drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere.

It estimates that some 60 to 75 of the fibreglass vessels, also known as "narco-subs" and capable of carrying upward of eight tonnes of cocaine when fully loaded, are built in clandestine jungle shipyards in northwest Colombia every year.

That makes the fleet big enough to handle almost all ofColombia's annual exports of cocaine, estimated by UN monitors to total about 600 metric tonnes a year.

For every seizure of a semi-submersible vessel - which cost about €387,000 each and are scuttled when they reach their final destinations - Nimmich said four others were likely out-plowing the seas northward with impunity. "At a very good pace this year, we are probably only about 20 per cent effective in interdicting semi-submersibles at this point in time," he said.