Madrid, Nov 4, (dpa/GNA) – The police in Portugal have intercepted a type of submarine in the Atlantic, carrying a load of more than 1.7 metric tons of cocaine.
In the operation codenamed El Dorado, the drugs were seized with the support of the navy, and the four occupants of the boat were arrested, the criminal investigation police (PJ) in Lisbon said on Tuesday.
Unlike real submarines, the so-called narco-subs built by the South American drug mafia cannot fully submerge.
The four captured men are from Venezuela, the state news agency Lusa reported. They are now being intensively interrogated in Lisbon, the report cited the responsible authorities as saying.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with anti-drug agencies from the United States and the United Kingdom, according to a statement from the PJ.
The investigations were based on information from the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (MAOC-N) in Lisbon, which monitors maritime drug routes.
This is the second major blow of this kind against the South American drug mafia that Portuguese investigators have achieved this year.
In March, they stopped one of these narco-subs with almost 7 tons of cocaine off the Azores archipelago, in collaboration with Spanish colleagues.
The Iberian Peninsula is increasingly becoming one of the most important entry points for the South American cocaine mafia into Europe, according to the authorities.
To stay under the radar of investigators, smugglers are increasingly using semi-submersibles, according to the authorities. These are self-built boats that travel mostly below the water’s surface and are therefore barely visible on radar and satellite images. However, unlike real submarines, they cannot fully submerge.
GNA