Costa Rica seizes 1.2 tonnes of cocaine

Police think the cargo had originally been transported by sea. Costa Ricas police seized 1.2 tonnes of cocaine stowed on a truck, the Public Security Ministry said during a news conference.Police said the seizure was carried out at dawn on Tuesday in the Tibas neighbourhood in the countrys capital city San Jose after authorities received an anonymous tip. Authorities arrested three Colombians in their 30s. Two vehicles escorting the truck were also seized.Public Security Minister, Mario Zamora, told a news conference in San Jose prosecutors were still inspecting the contents.We assume there is more than a tonne. Prosecutors on the case are checking this. The vehicle was taken to central anti-drugs police offices where the contents are being inspected, he said. Zamora added he believes the cocaine had originally been transported by sea.Mexican drug gangs are increasingly using Costa Rica as a pick-up point for South American cocaine headed north.Costa Rican police seized close to 93 tonnes of cocaine between 2006 and 2009, nearly twice the amount the Central American country captured in the previous decade, according to Interior Ministry data.Costa Rica sits halfway between the cocaine-producing Andes and Mexico, whose powerful cartels earn some $40 billion a year smuggling the drug to the United States and other developed countries.Traffickers traditionally moved cocaine through Central America by plane or boat. They now are well implanted in Guatemala and also are using storage bases in Costa Rica, a nation long known as a haven of stability in a region blighted by street gangs and poverty.Mexico is in the grip of a brutal drug war that has killed more than 40,000 people since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led drug war at the end of 2006.The crackdown is one of the reasons driving traffickers into Central America as they haul in cocaine from Colombia and rival producers such as Peru and Bolivia.