Aug
17
A high-tech Italian patrol plane spotted a merchant ship carrying three tonnes of cocaine that the Spanish police seized off their southern coast earlier this week, Italian police said Friday.
An ATR 42 financial police plane “detected and followed for two or three nights” the Bulgarian-flagged ship, SV Nikolay, which Spanish police raided on Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Giovanni Interdonato told AFP.
Interdonato, who was in charge of the air operation, said the plane was endowed with “special technology” that he refused to elaborate on in order to avoid giving an advantage to the traffickers.
The officer stressed that the Italian financial police (GDF) regularly carried out patrols as far as the Atlantic for the Lisbon-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre.
Apart from the Spanish operation, “the GDF air-naval unit based in Pratica di Mare, near Rome, has since the start of the year contributed to the seizure of more than eight tonnes of marijuana and detected the presence of more than 250 cannabis plantations in Albanian territory.”
In 2011, the air-naval command helped in the seizure of more than 58 tonnes of marijuana, more than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of cocaine and more than three tonnes of hashish.
The Spanish interior ministry said the police on Monday boarded the ship around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the port of Cadiz and seized more than 100 bags of cocaine, or more than three tonnes of the drug.
The Spanish police arrested 21 Bulgarian crewmembers as well as six Colombians in Madrid and four Spaniards in the northwestern Spain’s Galicia region who are suspected of overseeing the operation.
The Italian police said in a statement that the Bulgarians, anchored off the African coast, had “sailed their ship into the Caribbean to load up with the drugs, after having received a green light from Colombia while the Colombians sent their envoys to Spain to coordinate the operation.”
The authorities suspect the drugs were to be shipped overland from Galicia to Madrid.
Spain is the main gateway to Europe for cocaine from Latin America and for cannabis from neighbouring Morocco. Police regularly make large seizures.
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