Mexico faces new drug challenge: mini-submarines

MEXICO CITY — The capture was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine.

The 33-foot vessel turned out to be crammed with parcels apparently containing cocaine, possibly tons of it. The disheveled crew of four had emerged in stocking feet and baggy shorts, claiming to have shipped out from Colombia a week earlier under threat of death.

Mexico's military confirmed Thursday that the men were Colombian, but it offered little new information on the capture of the mini-sub off the southern coast a day earlier.

Capt. Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican navy, said authorities were hauling the "very well-constructed" vessel to shore and had yet to weigh the contraband, which he said probably amounted to tons.

The unusual episode suggests that the government, already struggling against drug traffickers by land and air, faces a vexing new front undersea.

Colombian drug suppliers have increasingly used small, semi-submersible craft to try to smuggle narcotics north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the U.S. Colombian forces and the U.S. Coast Guard have seized more than a dozen such boats during the last 2 1/2 years.

U.S. officials say the craft are being used more often because they are harder to detect by radar. The seizures represent a fraction of the 40 or so vessels that have been spotted since 2007, according to U.S. authorities.

"When they think they might be caught, the crews tend to scuttle them," said Jose Ruiz, spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which monitors drug activities. "They get out of them, sink them, and the drugs go to the bottom of the ocean so they can't be recovered for evidence."

Wednesday's seizure of the olive, surfboard-shaped vessel in the Pacific about 125 miles off the state of Oaxaca was the first of its kind off the coast of Mexico, authorities said.

The seizure provided images of speeding navy patrol boats and adrenaline-charged commandos perched atop the vessel -- a showy victory for President Felipe Calderon and his 18-month-old crackdown on drug-trafficking gangs.

The crackdown has sent 45,000 federal troops and police agents into the streets along the U.S. border and other key drug-smuggling corridors. Drug gangs have ratcheted up their capabilities by adding grenades and bazookas to their arsenals and, authorities say, outfitting cars with bombs for possible use against government forces.