Spanish police said on Sunday they seized 6.5 tonnes of cocaine and arrested nine people after a US tip led them to raid a ship off the Canary Islands several days ago.
IN statementPolice said the drugs were hidden in the hold of a Tanzanian-flagged boat from Panama en route to Vigo, in northwestern Spain. The approximately 177-foot-long cargo ship had unusual structures on board that concealed drugs, officials said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, the US federal agency responsible for combating drug trafficking, provided key “information” that allowed the operation to succeed, the press release said.
Liberation of the police video on social networks officers are shown on a speedboat intercepting a suspected drug-smuggling vessel.
Spanish National Police
Spain is one of the main gateways for cocaine into Europe due to its links to Latin America, where the drug is produced, and its geographical location in the southwest of the continent.
In June, police in several countries busted a drug trafficking network that used so-called high-speed “drug boats” to smuggle large quantities of cocaine from Brazil and Colombia to the Canary Islands. The ring is supposedly used an abandoned shipwreck as a refueling area for speed boats.
Last October, Spanish police carried out the largest cocaine seizure in history when they discovered some of it. 13 tons hidden in banana shipment to the southern port of Algeciras. Ecuadorian police intelligence warned Spanish authorities the national police said at that time.
Recently, large quantities of drugs have been seized from ships in other parts of the world. Earlier this month, US Central Command confirmed that a Pakistani warship had seized drugs. costs over $972 millions from sailing ships in the Arabian Sea. Last month the French fleet captured almost 10 tons of cocaine worth more than $600 million from a fishing vessel off the coast of West Africa.
In April, the US Coast Guard seized approximately 10,000 pounds of cocaine from a fishing boat in the Atlantic Ocean.
