The UK agents tackling Colombia's drug barons

By Natalio Cosoy

British law enforcement officers have been working with drug officers in Colombia since 1989 in a bid to stem the flow of cocaine into the UK. For the first time, the National Crime Agency has provided a glimpse of the work it is doing there.

In the early hours of the morning, covered by darkness, a group of anti-narcotics special forces surround a cocaine-producing lab in a mountainous and forested area at Norte de Santander, north-eastern Colombia, close to the border with Venezuela.

They wait silently while a constant drizzle falls on them.

At about 5am, when the lab workers start to arrive, the officers raid the site - a complex of some five big green and black canvas tarpaulins set up within the dense forest - filled with big cans of chemicals, microwaves, a press, and other devices used in the cocaine production process.

They manage to capture one man and collect evidence - among it the carved plastic slates used to brand the cocaine bricks - before blowing the lab up with C4 explosives.

The intelligence needed to find the lab and carry out the raid was gathered with help from officers of the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) working in Colombia.

One of the NCA's officers, whose identity cannot be revealed, was at the raid.

"Very happy, yeah, very happy after today. We've had a good exchange of intelligence with neighbouring countries and other NCA officers in other countries, so yeah, it's been a good result," he said.

"It just means that the flow of cocaine going into the UK is lessened. I mean, obviously, this is a small lab and this happens all the time but the more that we can do here working with the anti-narcotics police, the better."

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Thumbnail: Flickr CC kluzniak