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Police dismantle big cocaine lab in Bolivia

Written by EFE Thursday, 18 March 2010 00:00

Bolivian police discovered and dismantled a clandestine cocaine laboratory set up to produce 200 kilograms (440 pounds) per week of the drug, arresting three people at the scene, the press reported Thursday.

The elite FELCN counter-narcotics unit said the "mega-lab" was in a hard-to-reach spot about 28 kilometers (17 miles) from the eastern city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia's biggest urban center.

In the operation, police arrested two Colombians who allegedly were guarding the factory, along with a Bolivian man.

El Deber newspaper cited FELCN regional director Jorge Romero as saying that the lab was practically inaccessible by land, and so the law enforcement operation was undertaken with the support of air force helicopters.

Prosecutor Janeth Velarde said that the lab had its own power generation capability, chemical recycling, scales, dining room and bedrooms, and it is believed that up to 15 people were working there at the time, although most of them managed to escape as the police closed in.

"We believe that the drug traffickers began operating (there) four months ago. Because of the characteristics of the site and the quantity of chemicals we discovered, we presume that the factory could process about 200 kilograms of cocaine of high purity per week," Velarde said.

FELCN last week discovered another large drug lab with the capacity to produce 250 kilos of cocaine per day in Concepcion, a town in Santa Cruz.

Bolivia, like neighboring Peru, permits limited cultivation of coca - the source of cocaine - for legal use in teas, folk remedies and Andean religious rites.

Under leftist President Evo Morales, himself a former coca grower, Bolivia has sharply stepped up seizures of cocaine.