“paraiso turistico, la gloria para los narcos,” --en ingles

CNN reports
foto de avioneta descargando drogas cerca de playa de san pedro

SANTO DOMINGO.- The Cable News Network (CNN) is featuring the country in its Web site in a report titled “Drug flights surge in Caribbean en route to U.S.” and describes Dominican Republic as a “tourist paradise, and a drug runner's haven.”

“More than 800 miles of stunning turquoise coastline used for snorkeling -- and smuggling. What's smuggled mostly is cocaine from South America, bound for the United States. And in recent years, it's been pouring in,” says the report.

The prestigious network describes how in the last 2 years the narcotics problem arriving in this country by air “has increased exponentially," quoting Peter A. Reilly, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's supervisor in the Dominican Republic.

“The Dominican Republic's rocky coastline makes it difficult for anti-drug units to operate,” it says, and that officials say the number of flights carrying drugs into Hispaniola, the island shared by Dominican Republic and Haiti, has gone up roughly four-fold in just four years. It said about 10 percent of U.S.-bound cocaine is now shipped through Hispaniola. “One of the reasons is that there is little to stop the drugs from arriving. There are lots of places for smugglers to hide along the sparsely populated coastline.”

Dominican Republic’s rocky shores make it particularly difficult for drug response teams to operate, it said, and that the National Drugs Control Agency (DNCD) “is also struggling to keep up.”

According to CNN, Reilly admitted that the Dominican authorities “don't have the necessary resources to combat this problem.”

Recently, DNCD president Rafael Ramirez complained that even with greatly increased drug flights, the Dominican authorities don’t have any radar to track incoming planes.

In the last few years the DNCD has seized 2 small planes which landed in improvised runways in the country’s Eastern Motorway, and one was even ditched in the Caribbean coast near San Pedro, after presumably delivering drugs from South America.

“The drug control agency does have eight Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, but they don't have night-vision capability, a major problem when most drug drops are made at night. What's more, those helicopters have limited offshore flying capabilities,” the CNN report said.

CNN’s in-depth news program “Lou Dobbs Tonight" will feature the rising drugs coming through the Caribbean en route to the United States at 6 p.m. Thursday.

http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=24666