Coast Guard iilegally detaining drug suspects on ships

Independent, UK - In an expansion of the war on drugs, the US Coast Guard is targeting low-level smugglers in international waters - shackling them on ships for weeks or even months before they are formally charged in American courts.

Over the past six years, more than 2,700 men like Arcentales have been taken from boats suspected of smuggling Colombian cocaine to Central America, to be carried around the ocean for weeks or months as the American ships continue their patrols. These fishermen-turned-smugglers are caught in international waters, or in foreign seas, and often have little or no understanding of where the drugs aboard their boats are ultimately bound.

But nearly all of these boatmen are now carted from the Pacific and delivered to the United States to face criminal charges here, in what amounts to a vast extraterritorial exertion of American legal might.