Criminology and Psychology

Roman Vidal, 57, allegedly smuggled millions of dollars in black market cigarettes through the Port of Miami on behalf of European gangs --- including the Real IRA, which has claimed responsibility for an attack on a four soldiers waiting for a pizza delivery.The brutal killings -- which included execution shots to wounded victims lying on the ground -- threaten to derail the peace process in Northern Ireland, with one Protestant leader warning that it might signal a return to the "bad old days where people are being killed in open air gun attacks."Vidal fronted a freight company that imported millions of cigarettes from Panama, hid them under wood flooring and insulation in freighters at the Port of Miami and then sent them to gangs in Dublin, according to the complaint. He's been charged with four counts of federal wire and mail fraud.An informant tipped Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Miami to Vidal's scheme in Feb. 2006, and agents began watching ...

The 60-foot sloop 'Dances With Waves', detained off the coast of Ireland last Friday with over 1,800kg of cocaine on board, was apparently doomed to arrest from almost the minute it left the Caribbean.Suspicions over 'Dances With Waves' mounted when she was detected in waters off Trinidad & Tobago. Just 17 months ago, the catamaran 'Lucky Day', whose 1,554kg cocaine shipment was seized in Dunlough Bay in west Cork, began her transatlantic journey from precisely these same waters. As the sloop battled gales and mountainous seas to cross the Atlantic with her cargo of 1,875kg of cocaine, her every movement was watched by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, the Portugal-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre; the UK's elite Serious Organised Crime Agency and Ireland's Joint Drugs Taskforce.Experts suggest that the yacht was tracked on radar in the Caribbean by a long range P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, before being tracked by US satellites and ...

Punitive sentences totalling 85 years, which were passed down last week on three English gang members, are unlikely to stem the tide of transatlantic drug shipments. As he fielded calls last week from people eager to discuss the record prison sentences handed down to four drug smugglers over the €440 million haul of cocaine recovered off west Cork, Michael Colgan repeated one message over and over again. Intelligence is key to tackling the highly organised and well-resourced drugs gangs that target the European market, insisted Colgan, the head of the Customs drug enforcement unit. Yet the 1,500 kilos of cocaine was seized off Cork because of an accident that was both dramatic and absurd - the shipment would have safely landed in Ireland if one of the smugglers had not accidentally put diesel, rather than petrol, into the fuel tank of an inflatable boat. The seizure cast a spotlight on Ireland’s part in the international drugs trade and raised a major question for Irish law enforcement...