The vessel, with a crew of six men of Brazilian nationality, was escorted to Cape Verde, where it was searched and found a hidden compartment with 60 bales of cocaine.
The Judiciary and Navy Police intercepted, approximately 500 miles from Cape Verde, a Brazilian-flagged fishing boat with 1.6 tons of cocaine on board, as part of an international operation to combat drug trafficking.
In a statement released this Sunday, the (PJ) said that the vessel, with a crew of six men of Brazilian nationality, was escorted to Cape Verde, where it was the target of searches that allowed the discovery of a hidden compartment with 60 bales of cocaine.
Following these searches, all crew members were detained by Cape Verde authorities.
A location and interception of the vesselabout 500 nautical miles (about 900 kilometers) west of the Cape Verde archipelago, occurred via the Navy’s ocean patrol shipwhich had also embarked elements of the Portuguese and Cape Verdean PJ.
There were strong suspicions that the fishing vessel was being used by a criminal organization to transport a large quantity of cocaine between South America and the European continent, the statement also highlighted.
The PJ, through the National Unit to Combat Drug Trafficking, and the Navy, with an ocean patrol vessel and a team from the Boarding Detachment of the Marine Special Operations Unit, participated, in recent weeks, in an international combat operation to drug trafficking.
A operation “Trade Winds” was coordinated through the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center – Narcotics (MAOC-N), an international cooperation platform to reinforce the fight against drug trafficking by sea, based in Lisbon, and which includes nine European countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany.
In addition to the direct involvement of Cape Verde and Portugal, this operation also had the active collaboration of the Brazilian Federal Police, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, the PJ also said, adding that investigations into this if they continue.
With Lusa
