By LEDEDRA MARCHE
Senior FN Reporter
lededra@nasguard.com
Bahamas and United States Customs along with The Bahamas Drug Enforcement Unit and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency intercepted 25 suspected kilos of cocaine at the Freeport Container Port Thursday afternoon, making it the third successful seizure at the transshipment port this month.
Acting on information they had received, authorities conducted a search of a container at the Container Port around 4:00 p.m. and discovered three backpacks which contained the suspected cocaine with a street value of $550,000.
Officers from the Drug Enf-orcement Unit are continuing investigations into Wednesday's seizure.
Over the past 18 months, the container terminal — with its interdiction partners, Bahamas and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents, the DEA and DEU — has intercepted nearly a metric ton of cocaine.
The success in drug detection in containers that pass through the Freeport Container Port is a result of the new security initiatives, inc-lusive of electronic surveillance technology, physical perimeter installations and well-trained Bahamian operators and officers, at the 115 acre-site.
The Freeport Container Port (FCP) has worked hard over the years to establish partnerships with national and international governmental agencies for the protection and prevention of its terminal against trafficking of drugs and weapons of mass destruction.
In that vein, Bahamas Customs agents are on site around the clock.
A specially-equipped straddle carrier detects radiation and weapons of mass destruction at the FCP as a result of the Mega Ports Initiative.
The radiation detection straddle carrier is a prototype, the only one of its kind in the world, and has a scanning rate in the 98 percentile and is the envy of many ports and governments worldwide.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection and The Bahamas government signed an agreement in 2004 to participate in the program called the Mega-Port Initiative to ensure that all maritime cargo destined for the U.S. through the port of Freeport be pre-screened for terrorists and terrorist weapons.
The FCP became a member of a small elite group of container terminals to be allowed into the U.S. Government-sponsored program and construction on the radiation detection straddle carrier began in Freeport in 2005.
Testing and evaluation started later that year and live scanning was carried out in 2006 as the prototype straddle carrier is designed for specific task runs around the container yard, scanning every container on a daily basis looking for contraband.
The initial investment included the purchase of a retrofitted straddle carrier and the development of highly sensitive radiation detecting sensors by scientists at the U.S. nuclear testing facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
With this new technology, the Freeport Container Port is one of 23 ports around the world to be part of this special program.
Two years later, another U.S. Government-sponsored program called Container Security Initiative (CSI) was introduced at FCP at a cost of some $3 million after a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Bahamian Govern-ments for the placement of personnel, equipment and protocols at the container terminal which mirror those at participating international airports for U.S pre-clearance.
CSI proposes a security regime to ensure all containers that pose a potential risk for terrorism are identified and inspected at foreign ports before they are placed on vessels destined for the United States.
The state-of-the-art mobile scanner allows Bahamian and U.S. Customs and Bor-der Patrol agents to examine or inspect containers at will for illicit cargo, drugs, and weapons of any kind that might seek to disrupt good and legitimate trade.
Presently, a team of engineers are in Freeport on-site constructing the first commercially prepared straddle carrier which is expected to be completed by and ready for testing by October.
The ultimate goal is to establish the transshipment hub as a pre-clearance terminal for containers designated for the U.S. similar to the concept at the Grand Bahama International Airport and Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau, where U.S. bound airline passengers clear U.S. Customs in Freeport or Nassau.
Growth in container volume at FCP has evolved, largely unsolicited, and as a result containers virtually collect at the Freeport port from every continent and are redistributed everywhere.
The port moves approximately 3,000 to 3,500 containers a day and carries out some 90,000 lifts a month.
To-date, FCP is reportedly one of the world's busiest 100-container terminals and one of the world's busiest purely transshipment terminals.
