A report carried widely in the US media over the past weekend titled, “Drug gangs muscle into new territory: Central America”, indicates that the drug plane that landed here in Belize last November, in the record drug bust of cocaine valued at roughly $130 million, was the very same confiscated drug plane that had been stolen from the Honduran military days earlier, but taken to Venezuela before being brought into Belize with Columbian cocaine.
Police Minister Douglas Singh told Amandala Wednesday, April 27, that Belize police had checked with their Honduran counterparts, but they were not able to corroborate the registration number of the plane.
Last November, Belize police had reported the registration number of the twin-engine plane as N786B. Amandala’s search today for that registration number led us to a much smaller 4-seater plane with a single engine, certainly unable to be used in the large drug operation that occurred last November.
The official information from Belize police indicated that the plane that was found on the Southern Highway is a black, red and white Beechcraft Super King Air 200. The one to which the registration number N786B is assigned is a Beech A35 model.
The plane confiscated in Belize is the exact same model of the plane reported missing from Honduras, but which had provisional Mexican registration numbers: XB-K556/XB-KSC. However, the paint design is different.
Since Singh told us that there was no confirmation that the drug plane, still parked in Belize, was the confiscated drug plane stolen from the Honduran military last November, we contacted the Honduran Embassy in Belize, to see if they could provide more clarity.
A spokesperson from the Embassy told us that they were also informed that the particulars of the planes did not match—but that another query has been made with Honduran authorities following our newspaper’s request for information.
Amandala lastly contacted the author of the story carried in the US media, Tim Johnson, who is Mexico Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers, which includes Miami Herald, Kansas City Star and The Tribune newspapers in the USA. Johnson told us that he had obtained the information from his security sources. He pointed us to information posted on a French website (http://morice.7duquebec.com/?p=842), which indicates that the registration number of the plane found in Belize appeared to be hastily posted on it.
This information is interesting in light of recent incidents reported in Belize media that unauthorized changes in plane registration numbers were attempted openly at the Philip Goldson International Airport.
Furthermore, our newspaper was made to understand that the Hondurans are exploring a possible Belize connection with a major bust in San Pedro Sula on the 17th of last month, in which they uncovered a jungle processing facility, an arsenal of weapons, and cocaine paste.
The McClatchy news report said, “Drug cartels now control large parts of the countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America. They’ve bought off politicians and police, moved cocaine processing laboratories up from the Andes, and are obtaining rockets and other heavy armament that make them more than a match for Central America’s weak militaries.”
It also cites burgeoning political influence in the drug trade.
Belize Police Minister Singh told us that his team is hoping to strengthen collaboration with officials in Honduras, and they have a meeting slated for June to discuss the problem of crime.
Singh also informed Amandala that the Belize Defence Force (BDF) has made an argument for the use of the confiscated Beechcraft.
Amandala understands that another drug plane nabbed in a similar landing on the Northern Highway in 2008 and sold via auction has been repaired and is parked at the Philip Goldson International Airport.