A joint operation of the Civil Guard, the National Police and the Customs Surveillance Service has intercepted a fishing boat with more than 1,500 kilos of cocaine in the waters near the Canary Islands. The operation has resulted in the arrest of the six crew members of the boat, and has been carried out in difficult weather conditions, as reported by the Ministry of the Interior. This is the fifth large cocaine haul seized this year in the Atlantic in the waters surrounding the islands.
In the early hours of Thursday to Friday, the patrol Condor Customs Surveillance intercepted the fishing boat Ephesians 5-20, Brazilian flag, about 278 kilometers south of the archipelago. The intercepted ship carried 1,500 kilos of cocaine in its interior divided into 60 bales, according to the estimates of the agents who have participated in the operation. The narcotic substances were inside a special compartment built in the ship’s engine room, a noisy area with high temperatures, which made it difficult for the agents to find the merchandise.
To this adversity another has been added, a water inlet in the engine room that forced the ship’s engines to stop overnight. In addition, the operation was carried out in force 7 storm conditions, which means winds of around 60 kilometers per hour and waves that can exceed four meters in height.
The operation culminated this Friday when the patrol Condor has arrived at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to unload the drug. The six crew members of the fishing boat have been arrested. Five of them were of Brazilian nationality, including their captain, and one of Venezuelan nationality, and all have already gone to court.
The operation is the result of international collaboration through the Analysis Center against Maritime Drug Trafficking in the Atlantic (MAOC) and has been coordinated by the Intelligence Center for Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO).
What affects the most is what happens closer. To not miss anything, subscribe.
subscribe
This is the fifth large cocaine cache that the Spanish security forces have captured this year in the maritime vicinity of the Canary Islands. The total balance of these operations is more than 14.1 tons seized, adding to the 1,500 kilos of this Friday the 4,500 that were found on board the merchant blume and the cattle ship Orionthe 2,500 on the sailboat Mambo, and another 1,139 kilos in two other sailboats, all of them in January of this year. In all of these interventions, 57 people have been arrested.
The action against Ephesians 5-20 joins those already carried out in the fight against drug trafficking on the Atlantic route of cocaine, used by sailing ships, fishing boats and merchant ships that, coming from South America and the Caribbean, transship narcotic substances in the middle of the Atlantic to later introduce them in Europe.
#fishing #boat #kilos #cocaine #intercepted #coast #Canary #Islands