The largest narco-submarine in Colombia’s history, measuring 100 feet long and 10 feet wide, has been seized in the Pacific Ocean with three tons of cocaine, the Colombian Navy said on Friday.
The vehicle was stopped on Tuesday as it headed for Central America, on one of the most frequented routes for illicit trafficking to the United States, the world’s largest consumer of Colombian cocaine.
Footage shared by authorities shows a dark craft lying on dry land surrounded by hundreds of drug packages camouflaged with Toyota labels and three men detained in the center.
This is the largest identified semi-submersible since records were set (1993) in the largest producer of cocaine in the world. In three decades, the Navy has seized 228 vehicles of this type, loaded with tons of drugs from the Pacific to the United States and even crossing the Atlantic to reach Europe.
The detained crew, who are Colombian nationals, assured that they were “forced by a drug trafficking organization to board and take the semi-submersible containing the alkaloid to Central America,” the bulletin said.
After the operation, the men aged 63, 54 and 45 were taken to Tumaco (South) to be brought before the Justice Department.
According to Navy calculations, the seizure meant a loss of $103 million (for the organization.
Made in Colombia, these rugged, fast craft operate at water surface level, cover greater distances than speedboats, and are difficult for authorities to track.
The country’s law punishes the use, construction, sale, possession and transportation of semi-submersibles with prison sentences of up to 14 years.
After half a century of US funding and aid in the war on drugs, Colombia continues to achieve record levels of cocaine production.
In 2021, the plantations from which the drug was extracted covered 204 thousand hectares and the production of cocaine hydrochloride was almost 1400 tons, according to the UN.
Colombia has been bloodied by armed conflict for more than half a century and has failed to extinguish the violence financed by the drug trade, which has killed more than nine million people.
Source: DN
