A Canadian man is amongst seven foreigners who were arrested in Costa Rica on Thursday on charges that they kidnapped a pilot in order to force the pilot to fly a shipment of cocaine out of the country.

The other kidnappers include five Colombian nationals and a Romanian, according to officials.

The arrests took place at a house in a residential development in Tres Rios de La Union where the pilot was allegedly being held against his will, as the kidnappers were preparing to transport the kidnapped pilot to another location.

After the raid, police officers discovered 12 kilos of cocaine hidden in a false wall inside the house, according to a Friday press statement by prosecutors.

The kidnapped pilot is a Honduran national, according to officials.

Law enforcement officials have yet to comment on how they learned of the kidnapping.

 

Unprecedented month for ‘narco flights’ out of Costa Rica

While Thursday’s arrests are almost certainly the first case in Costa Rica of a pilot being kidnapped to forcibly transport cocaine, April has been a busy – and deadly – month in Costa Rica’s skies for drug traffickers.

An incredible three drug planes crashed in Costa Rica in less than a week’s time this month, most recently on Tuesday, April 12^th, when a small aircraft crashed into the sea just two kilometers off the coast of Puerto Jimenez in the southern zone of Costa Rica.

The aircraft went down just two kilometers off Carate beach, while apparently coming in for a landing at a clandestine airstrip, according to authorities.

Coast Guard units responding to the scene found the aircraft still sinking at sea, with the remains of a man appearing to be between 45 and 50 years of age inside. Amongst the man’s belongings were Mexican currency and a Mexican newspaper, according to authorities.

Nearly simultaneously, police officers located an abandoned vehicle loaded with some 370 kilos of cocaine in the San Lazaro district of Puerto Jimenez. Authorities believe the cocaine was eventually to be loaded aboard the aircraft and flown northward to Mexico, en route to the United States.

Just days earlier, a single-engine aircraft crashed and burned near Nosara, in Costa Rica’s northwestern Guanacaste province, killing both of the aircraft’s occupants.

Amongst the wreckage, authorities discovered 50 kilos of cocaine, US $45,000 in cash, and multiple firearms.

That same day, the remains of another crashed aircraft, which unofficial sources have linked to the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, were found recently buried – apparently by heavy machinery – at a clandestine airstrip on a palm plantation in Quepos, located on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast.

 

Costa Rica officials expect record year for cocaine trafficking

Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security (MSP) and Drug Control Police (PCD) are expecting a record level of cocaine trafficking through the country and its territorial waters this year, due in large part to increases in production in the source countries of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.

The MSP estimates that some 1,700 tons of cocaine will flow through Costa Rica and its territorial waters this year, a nearly 42 percent increase from the 1,200 tons estimated to have been trafficked through Costa Rican territory in 2015 and 2.5 times as much as the 670 tons believed to have been trafficked through the country in 2014.

Last year, Cost Rican authorities were able to seize just 15 tons – less than 1 percent – of the estimated 1,200 tons believed to have flowed through the country’s territory.

According to the PCD, the amount of land dedicated to coca production – the plant from which cocaine is derived – in producer countries has increased, as well as the quantity and quality of the harvest.