Officials from the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency aboard the Special Operations vessel ‘Petrel I’, along with agents from the Civil Guard and National Police, have intercepted a sailboat loaded with nearly 500 kilos of cocaine 400 kilometers south of the Canary Islands. Three crew members have been arrested in the operation.
The operation was initiated within the framework of the bilateral operation between the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency and the French Customs (DNGCD), named Pascal-Lino, which takes place annually in Atlantic waters, and continued within the framework of another operation named Azul, led by the Portuguese Polícia Judiciária from the Maritime Analysis Centre against Narcotrafficking in the Atlantic (MAOC-N).
These two operations have coexisted sequentially to reinforce surveillance and action in the maritime area of Macaronesia, in which Spanish and French customs maintained the availability of their resources for 25 days.
Once intelligence information was received regarding the suspicious sailboat in the first of the operational phases, the special operations vessel ‘Petrel I’ was redirected towards the target, which was located about 400 miles south of the Canary Islands.
The sailboat was intercepted by the ‘Petrel I’ after several days of tracking, with the support of the French customs vessel ‘Jean Francois Deniau’, both in a joint operational action of surveillance and control in the Macaronesia zone (maritime strip extending from the Azores islands to Cape Verde).
International cooperation allowed for intelligence information from operation ‘Azul’ to be obtained, as well as from the police services of the United Kingdom (NCA) and the United States (DEA), channeled through MAOC. Likewise, information regarding this target was also received from Frontex.
The information received was coordinated nationally by the Center for Intelligence against Terrorism and Organized Crime (Citco), and was jointly analyzed by the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, the National Police, and the Civil Guard.
An extremely dangerous boarding
The maritime operation required a tactical evaluation that would allow action while minimizing risks in the boarding, an action that entails extreme danger for the officials of the Special Operations vessel ‘Petrel I’ of Customs Surveillance, in unstable sea and wind conditions that forced increased surveillance, maintaining the discreet tracking operation for several days after the vessel's detection, until its interception was finally possible.
The summer fogs typical of the operational area, combined with unstable navigation conditions, prevented air support at the time of boarding. The sea state also complicated the launching of the auxiliary boats used for boarding.
The three crew members of the sailboat, two of Brazilian nationality and one Moroccan, have been arrested.
The special operations vessel ‘Petrel I’, along with the three detainees and the seized drug, has arrived at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
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