A drug plane landed in southern Belize this weekend. It happened in the remote reaches of the Toledo District. Commissioner of Police Chester Williams today said that it had to happen eventually - since there has been increased narco activity recently:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"I must say that over the past few weeks we are seeing an increase in air traffic activity within the region. Not only for Belize, but there was one that went even as far as Curaçao, no, Turks and Caicos. So, believe again, being strategically located in Central America, bordering Mexico, and Guatemala do serve as a transit point for drugs to move to the north. And so over the weekend on Friday night to be exact there was a track that came out of South America and upon entering our airspace in the south, it disappeared off the radar. Information initially suggested that the plane had landed in Guatemala, but we did not get any confirmation from our Guatemalan counterparts that it landed there. And so just to be sure, the BDF did a flyover on Sunday and
during the flyover, they observe the burnt remains of a plane in the Corazón Creek area. That is located I think about 4 miles from the Belize Guatemalan border. And based on the observation by the BDF that did the fly over a team of police and BDF went into the area on foot, and I must say that the area is heavily vegetated, extremely rough, terrain, and it took them a couple of hours to get to the location, but when they finally got to the location, they indeed came across the burnt remains of a plane in that particular area. Nothing else of interest was found based on what I am briefed by the team that went in is that the plane, the remains that was found there seems to have been recently landed so we believe that that would have been the plane that fell off the radar Friday night."
Jules Vasquez
"Do you all know which direction or do you have any estimate of which direction the drugs went? Did they go straight into Guatemala or did they go into a waterway in Belize down towards the sea?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"The trend, the trend has always been that it was directly into Guatemala and that is why they choose to learn the plane so close to the border area. That way they won't have to go through much to be able to get the drugs over to Guatemala but again it is not far-fetched that they could have also used the waterways, there is a river in that area they could use the river, and from the river to the sea they catch the deep waters and then they can also go up north. But from what we are getting some intelligence, it would appear that the drugs are going directly into Guatemala from there they make their way through Guatemala into Mexico."
