A vessel carrying 1800 kg of cocaine was intercepted off the Azores, in an international operation that involved several police and military forces. There were eight foreign men on the boat and the interior of the vessel, extremely small, showed precarious conditions, including a space similar to a bathroom where the crew cooked and lived during the trip.
According to the Judiciary Police (PJ), the vessel, coming from an unspecified Latin American country, was boarded around 450 nautical miles from the Azores “in extreme conditions of difficulty”. In addition to the eight men, several objects used in navigation and transport of drugs were seized.
After the interception, the detainees and the drugs were transferred to a Navy ship, which, together with the Air Force, participated in the operation, then heading to the port of Ponta Delgada, in the Azores. The PJ indicated that the investigation aimed to “stop the illicit activity that they had been carrying out over the last few days”.
This operation was part of the MAOC-N (Maritime Analysis and Operations Center – Drugs), with international collaboration and cooperation with authorities from the United Kingdom (NCA), the United States (DEA) and the JIATF-S (Joint Interagency Task Force South), and began at the beginning of March this year.
🎯 Operation “SURVIVOR”
👉 Fishing vessel with 1.8 tons of cocaine seizedcarried out an operation in conjunction with and which led to the dismantling of a criminal group dedicated to the introduction of large quantities of drugs into Europe
— Judiciary Police (@PJudiciaria)
