ONCE Costa Rica was a tourist paradise with unspoilt beaches and low crime - now cocaine cartels are turning its streets into a battleground., sandwiched between the long-troubled Nicaragua and Panama, has seen killings soar by 61 per cent in a decade - with the vast majority connected to turf wars.School children and tourists are now in the firing line, too, with hitmen carrying out assassinations in broad daylight and gangs moving into kidnapping.
Five years ago the dead body of American bookmaker William Sam Creighton was found after he’d been kidnapped - even though his family paid a million dollar ransom.The former Spanish colony has no standing army, preferring to spend its funds on education, but is now having to increase its numbers of armed police to deal with drug gangs.
The attackers dressed as law enforcement officers and shot seven of the victims between eight and 16 times as they lay face down on the ground.Last month four men were each given 50-year prison sentences for what was the most deadly massacre in the country’s history.Limón has the highest homicide rate in Costa Rica - at 33 per 100,000 people. In Britain the homicide rate is 1.2 per 100,000.
The country’s Judicial Investigation Organism has linked more than 60 per cent of the violent deaths to drug trafficking.Although Costa Rica does not have the right soil and climate for growing the coca plants that produce cocaine, it is on route from
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