Guatemala's top anti-drug officials arrested
Guatemala's two top anti-drug officials and one police officer were arrested in the United States for attempting to smuggle cocaine, Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said on Wednesday.

Police in the US state of North Virginia arrested Adan Castillo Lopez, head of Guatemala's Anti-Narcotic Analysis and Information Service, Ruben Orlando Palacios, head of security at the Caribbean port city of Santo Tomas and another Guatamalan officer on Tuesday shortly after they arrived in the United States.

The three were charged with criminal conspiracy and attempted smuggling, and their indictments have been handed up by a federal grand jury in Washington.

Vielmann said that US authorities had informed them six months ago that the three were suspected of drug trafficking and that they had been under constant surveillance since then.

He said the arrests followed the seizure of nearly a ton of cocaine, worth around 12.9 million US dollars, in a boat reached Santo Tomas from Venezuela, but it was unclear if that was directly related to the arrests.

"More than corrupting the public trust, these Guatemalan police officers have been Trojan horses for the very addiction and devastation that they were entrusted to prevent," said Karen Tandy, the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, in a statement issued in Washington.

US officials say drug cartels are increasingly using Guatemala as a route to smuggle cocaine from South America into Mexico and on to the United States, and the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that 75 percent of all the cocaine reaches the country comes in through Guatemala.