MADRID (AP) – Spanish police have detained a fishing boat loaded with nearly three metric tons (3.3 short tons) of cocaine south of the Canary Islands, authorities said on Sunday.
Police captured the 20-meter (65-foot) ship, called AKT 1, on Wednesday about 300 nautical miles (555 kilometers) south of the Spanish archipelago, located in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa.
Police have arrested five crew members – four Turkish nationals and a man from the former Soviet republic of Georgia – on a ship carrying drugs into a fuel tank. The drugs are believed to have come from an unspecified location in South America, police said.
A Spanish air patrol spotted the suspicious ship as it tried to hide among a flotilla of fishing vessels. He was then taken on board by a customs patrol ship.
Police say they are focusing on dismantling what they call an “African route” for South American traffickers who transfer cargo of drugs to fishing vessels in the mid-Atlantic before smuggling them into Europe.
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