By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 8 hours ago, Updated 8 hours ago
Cocaine seizure photographed in the Canary Islands in 2008. AFP
The drugs were hidden in a silo intended to store cattle feed.
Spanish police on Saturday announced the seizure of 4.5 tons of cocaine off the Canary Islands aboard a Togolese cargo ship arriving from Latin America. The “Orión V”, which transported cattle to countries in the Middle East, had been closely monitored for more than two years: it had already “been checked and searched, but no drugs were found inside despite sufficient evidence of the presence,” said the Police.
A “naval aviation” device finally made it possible to get hold of the cocaine hidden in a silo to be used to feed livestock on Tuesday, January 24, she adds. The operation, which mobilized the American anti-narcotics agency DEA, the International Operations Center for the Analysis of Maritime Intelligence on Drugs (MAOC-N), the Togolese authorities and the Spanish police, among others, allowed the arrest of the 28 crew members , from nine different ones nationalities.
The Togolese-flagged freighter “Orión V” had the same dimensions as a Togolese freighter intercepted in mid-January in the same area, 62 miles southeast of the Canary Islands, the “flower”, on which the same amount of cocaine was found. Accordingly, a total of nine tons of drugs were confiscated in January, the police said in a statement. Spain’s close ties to South America, where cocaine comes from, make it one of the main drug gateways into Europe.