Spanish police were yesterday holding 55 men after a dramatic mid-Atlantic raid on a St Vincent and Grenadines-registered trawler in which they discovered some 10 tons of pure cocaine en route for the European markets.
The operation, code-named "Operation Temple", is the culmination of many months of investigation involving anti-drug police in several countries and the tracking of the trawler Tammsaare across the Atlantic after it was first spotted near Panama on June 18th until the boarding operation some 900 miles from the Canary Islands. Police have not revealed the port of origin of the trawler, although they suspect that the cargo originated in Colombia.
A group of the crack GEO antiterrorist police accompanied customs officers to the rendezvous in two high-speed customs vessels from which they intercepted the Tammsaare and arrested its crew of 16, all believed to be Russian and Belarusan sailors, one of whom died after suffering an epilepsy attack. Thirty-nine others were arrested in simultaneous raids in Galicia, Las Palmas, Alicante and Madrid.
Drug officers say they believe that the ultimate destinations of the cocaine were various European ports and that the gang had planned to unload their cargo into other boats off the coast of northern Spain or Portugal.
As he prepared to fly out to the Canary Islands yesterday afternoon to await the arrival of the Tammsaare, Mr Juan Cotino, director general of the national police, said that the operation was still under way and that he did not discount further arrests over the next few days. He said that 10 tonnes was the second largest maritime cocaine haul ever made, but that the exact amount would not be known until the trawler had docked and the cargo - which comes in 323 separate packets each labelled with a US dollar note - weighed. Three years ago US DEA officials seized a cargo of 20 tons of cocaine in a similar high-seas raid.
Speaking in Madrid yesterday Mr Jurgen Storbeck, director of Europol, praised the successful operation. "It is one of the most important in recent years," he said.