Submarines Ferry Colombian Blow

MEXICO CITY -- When anti-narcotics agents first heard that drug cartels were building an armada of submarines to transport cocaine, they thought it was a joke.

Now U.S. law enforcement officials say that more than a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Colombia travels in submersibles.

An experimental oddity just two years ago, these strange semi-submarines are the cutting edge of drug trafficking today. They ferry hundreds of tons of cocaine for powerful Mexican cartels that are taking over the Pacific Ocean route for most northbound shipments, according to the Colombian navy.

The sub-builders are even trying to develop a remote-controlled model, officials say.

"That means no crew. That means just cocaine, or whatever, inside the boat," said Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The subs are powered by ordinary diesel engines and built of simple fiberglass in clandestine shipyards in the Colombian jungle. U.S. officials expect 70 or more to be launched this year with a potential cargo capacity of 380 tons of cocaine, worth billions of dollars in the United States.

"This is definitely the next generation of smuggling conveyance," said Joseph Ruddy, an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa who prosecutes narco-mariners.

The submersibles are equipped with technologies that make them difficult to intercept, even though U.S. forces use state-of-the-art submarine warfare strategies against them. Authorities say most slip through their net.

"You try finding a floating log in the middle of the Pacific," one DEA agent said.

U.S. officials and their Colombian counterparts have detected evidence of more than 115 submersible voyages since 2006. They have apprehended the crews of more than 22 submersibles at sea since 2007. Six crews have been arrested this year. The Colombian navy has intercepted or discovered 33 subs since 1993.

U.S. officials fear that the rogue vessels could be used by terrorists intent on reaching the United States with deadly cargos.

The vessels do not fully submerge but skim the sea surface. They move quickly at night, then drift like sleeping whales during the day. Under cover of darkness, they slither out of Colombia's shallow rivers and 10 days later rendezvous offshore along the Central American coast, usually near Guatemala, where cocaine is offloaded and the subs are sunk.

Life for Pregnant Briton in Laos Trial

(CNN) -- A pregnant British woman accused of trying to smuggle heroin onto a flight to Thailand from Laos was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison.

Samantha Orobator, 20, was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced after a three-hour trial, an official in the southeast Asian country said. He declined to give his name because he is not authorized to talk to foreign media.

Orobator's mother was in the courtroom, he said.

The British Foreign Office also confirmed Orobator's sentence.

She was jailed last August at the airport in the Lao capital, Vientiane, and charged with carrying about half a kilogram of heroin.

London and Vientiane signed a prisoner transfer agreement last month, the Foreign Office said.

But it does not kick in automatically at this point, a Foreign Office representative told CNN.

"Before transfer can take place, the sentence must be final with no appeals or legal processes outstanding," the representative said, declining to be named in line with policy.

"Both states and the prisoner have to consent to a transfer. We are seeking access to Samantha" and will ask her "how she wants to proceed."

Orobator is more than five months pregnant, and enters her third trimester on Saturday.

The circumstances under which she became pregnant in prison remain unclear.

She told her mother she was not raped in prison and that the father is not a Lao prison official.

A newspaper run by the Lao government reported Orobator as saying she impregnated herself with the sperm of another prisoner being held in the same jail.