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Who can you trust in Latin-American anti-drug fight?
People in high places implicated
August 17, 1996
Web posted at: 6:25 p.m. EDT (2225 GMT)From Correspondent Ronnie Lovler
SANTIAGO, Chile (CNN) -- Dealing with those who deal in drugs is a difficult issue in Latin America, especially when dealers come from the ranks of those who are supposed to enforce anti-drug laws.
In Peru, four shipments of cocaine have been seized on Peruvian Navy ships in recent months. Separately, four Air Force officers, including one of Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's pilots, were arrested on charges of cocaine trafficking.
As a result, Fujimori has ordered police to take over the drug fight in his country. The president said Peru had been relying on the military, because of the presence of terrorists. Police could not fight both terrorists and drug traffickers, he said.
The Peruvian government is also offering amnesty to small-time drug dealers who give information that can pinpoint major drug dealers. But some analysts criticize that idea.
"In an area where trafficking is part of daily life, any person could say, 'OK, I am going to give information.' But you don't know if that information is truth, or it is wrong," said Ricardo Soberon of the Andean Commission of Jurists.
"It could lead to a lot of apprehensions -- arbitrary apprehensions."
Peru's problem is by no means unique in the region.
In Argentina, the members of an anti-narcotics police squad were suspended and three officers arrested recently after an undercover operation detected their links to the drug trade.
And in Chile, a cocaine shipment with an estimated street value of $15 million was seized last month, the country's largest ever. A former Colombian diplomat in Santiago has been arrested in the case.
Separately, four employees of Chile's Congress have been arrested for drug trafficking. A judicial probe is studying whether any legislators knew about the illegal activity.
"We do not accept that Chile become a transit point of drugs toward another continent, or toward the Northern Hemisphere," said Deputy Interior Minister Belsario Velasco.
"For moral and ethical reasons, we cannot accept that, that our territory be a base where drugs are dispatched."
But increasingly in Latin America, illegal drug trafficking does not respect national borders.
Related stories:
- Dirty drug money washed in Chile- Apr. 23, 1996
- Police take on new attitudes in changing times- Dec. 30, 1995
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