Elaborate hide-out found

Press, 24 June 1983, Page 6

Elaborate hide-out found

NZPA London A multi-million pound international drug ring, equipped with computers, radar, high-speed boats, and an underground hide-out, has been uncovered on the Welsh coast, the “Daily Express” reports. Police and customs investigators had been stunned by the scale and daring of the activity, set up on two treacherous pebble beaches facing the Irish Sea and normally visited only by seals, it said. Working secretly by night under the cover of 100metre cliffs the gang had excavated an underground

i chamber five metres square and lined it with glass fibre. 1 The only entrance was , through a trapdoor hidden , under pebbles on the beach. i Under tarpaulins, also , camouflaged with pebbles, j the police had found tens of thousands of pounds worth of sophisticated equipment. There were powerful out--1 board engines, fast Zodiac f inflatable boats, similar to ) the ones used by coastguard . s inshore rescue crews, short1 wave radios, tents, tools, r fuel and food supplies. All the equipment was t brand-new and many items - were still tagged with the 1 prices, the “Express” said. 1 “It looked like a Holly-

wood film set.., it was an incredible sight,” a lifeguard and inshore rescue boatman was quoted as sayOne of the inflatable boats was a 6 metre-long sea-going vessel equipped with a 400 h.p. outboard engine capable of at least 50 knots. Because of the inaccessibility of the beaches, the g)lice had had to call in a oyal Air Force Sea King helicopter to lift the equipment from the beaches, the “Express” said. An instruction book found with the highly sophisticated radar gear, for pinpointing drug-delivery

boats, showed that its range covered the whole of the British Isles and half the Continent. It was believed that the gang, backed by an unlimited cash supply from international drug peddlers, 1 had virtually completed a permanent base for drugsmuggling, the “Express” said. The discovery of the secret base had been made by chance on Sunday when two farmers saw men at Red Beach Cove and thought that they were stranded. Three men and a woman were being questioned by detectives yesterday.