In a period of less than 24 hours, the National Army carried out two operations in conjunction with the Colombian Air Force, in coordination with the National Police, and inter-institutionally, with the Attorney General's Office, finding a cocaine hydrochloride production laboratory and three collection centers that housed potassium permanganate.
Thanks to exhaustive work by military and police intelligence, it was possible to establish the exact place of the laboratory and the collection centers where the troops of the Aviation Division Air Assault infiltrated in support of the Second and Third Divisions.
The first operation was carried out in the Manta de Tilo village, Teorama municipality, Norte de Santander, together with National Police personnel who found a cocaine hydrochloride production laboratory, which would belong to the residual Organized Armed Group, GAO-r, Structure 33.
There, 1,229 kilograms of cocaine hydrochloride in solution, 32 kilograms of cocaine hydrochloride and 81 kilograms of cocaine base in solution, 625 kilograms of solid precursors and 1159 gallons of liquid precursors were found by troops.
In the second operation, troops of the Command against Drug Trafficking and Transnational Threats arrived in the San Francisco village, municipality of El Tambo, in Nariño, and there they found three illegal hiding places in which chemical precursors were stored, such as potassium permanganate, more than 5,000 gallons of liquid supplies and 860 kilograms of solid supplies, this material and equipment would be part of the GAO ELN, Jaime Toño Obando militia company.
These chemicals are essential for the production of cocaine hydrochloride, so with their destruction it was possible to prevent the production of approximately four tons of the narcotic on a monthly basis.
No arrests were made at the scene and the material was put into custody of the authority to conduct their respective judicial process.
Source: Press - National Army
