The Spanish authorities, with the support of the US DEA, seized more than 4,500 kilos of cocaine on a cargo ship on the high seas from Colombia and detained its 28 crew, several of them Latin Americans, after discovering the drug in a shipment of cattle.
The Spanish Police reported this Saturday of this operation in which ten Tanzanians, five Syrians, four Kenyans, two Ecuadorians, two Panamanians, two Colombians, a Dominican, a Nepali and a Nicaraguan were arrested.
“International organizations reinvent themselves when it comes to transporting drugs from Latin America to Europe, using live cattle to make it difficult to control and locate them,” they said in a statement.
🚩A cargo ship with 4,500 kilos of cocaine from #Colombia
🚩Joint operation with the Tax Agency
🚩 The ‘Orion V’ has been intercepted by the Customs Surveillance ship ‘Fulmar’
🚩The 28 crew members of the cargo ship were arrested pic.twitter.com/C5iTTlCNyN
– National Police (@police) January 28, 2023
The Togolese-flagged cargo ship Orion V was boarded in the Atlantic about 62 miles, about a hundred kilometers, southwest of the Spanish Canary Islands by a vessel from the Customs Surveillance Service of Spainin collaboration with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEAfor its acronym in English), the authorities of Togo and the European Center for Analysis and Maritime Operations in the field of drug trafficking
The merchant was investigated since 2020 and had been previously inspected without finding drugs, on suspicion that he was loading it in port or on the high seas hidden in cattle that he transported mainly to countries in Africa and Asia, according to the Police.
An operation by sea and air managed to locate it this week and in a feed silo inside it, bundles of drugs were found, for which the merchant was transferred to the Spanish port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in an operation coordinated by the Prosecutor’s Office Anti-drug of the National Court of Spain.
In mid-January, the Spanish authorities boarded another cargo ship with similar characteristics, also with some 4,500 kilos of cocaine on the so-called Atlantic Route of this drug from South America to Europe, the statement stressed.
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