It is not an isolated event or a test of new technology. The semi-submersible is already a mode of transport for drug traffickers that will herald a new era in the fight against drugs and force a change in police strategies and their methods of tracing large shipments of cocaine at sea from South America to Europe after the three devices were found in Galicia since 2006 , the latest on Monday, it is confirmed that this method, conceived for drug camouflage and shaped by the Colombian cartels for almost three decades, releases its production as a world leader in the manufacture of cocaine, catapulting the Galician crews as necessary collaborators in a business unleashed by an unstoppable demand.
It is still unknown what story of drug traffickers is behind the artifact found this Monday in the Arosa Estuary, the traditional water of multi-million dollar tobacco and drug discharges that began to emerge like the tip of an indestructible iceberg, but there is none doubt the pieces fit together like a classic transport, except the mothership didn’t sail on water. After an intense day of diving, the divers were unable to open the ship’s hatch. They did that Tuesday, confirming the most plausible hypothesis: the boat was empty and not a trace of drugs.
Once out of the water, the semi-submersible’s name was clearly visible; Poseidon, the god of the seas from Greek mythology. Handcrafted fiberglass construction and approximately 22 meters in length, the boat is neutral in color, likely indicative of its low thermal output, which is virtually undetectable by radar. It is very similar, if not identical, to the three-ton cocaine narco submarine seized in 2019, although its interior is being inspected closely by Civil Guard specialists at a shipyard in A Illa de Arousa, where it was located in the early hours of the morning cast off this Tuesday afternoon after being towed from the port of Vilaxoán to the island port of Xufre.
It is hard to believe that such a ship, with a maximum of three crew members, can travel around 8,000 kilometers, the distance that separates, for example, Galicia from the mangrove swamps of the Colombian district of Tumaco, one of the strategic points of drug trafficking, which requires the most innovative shipyards for the construction of these has semi-submersible. There it is controlled from the cultivation of coca leaves to the production of cocaine hydrochloride and its export. Located in the department of Nariño on the border with Ecuador, the municipality is, according to the UN, the largest producer of illegal plantations in Colombia, the country that has not managed to leave the top spot in the ranking, far ahead of Peru and Bolivia. It is the world’s leading producer of cocaine and the United States is the largest user of the drug.
The semi-submersible era began in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2006 that the first was intercepted with 3.5 tons of cocaine while sailing off Costa Rica. From the Colombian mangroves that flow into the sea, narco submarines laden with tons of drugs leave Central America or the United States and are now crossing the Atlantic to reach Europe. Their journey has not been traceable so far and it is likely that more than two of these artifacts have reached Galicia. In fact, the Narco submarine, anchored in the Vigo estuary three years ago, has been tracked ever since it entered Portuguese waters to head for the Galician coast, but aircraft surveillance yielded no results. No one expected the mothership to be a submersible. The fight against the Narco was fought underwater.
Members of the Civil Guard and Customs continue rescue operations to refloat the Narco submarine found in the Pontrevedra estuary in November 2019. Oscar Corral
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Produced in less than three months, their cost can be around one million euros, a tip compared to the volume of business moving cocaine, which is ten times the original price on the European market. In a tiny cabin, in unsanitary conditions, where food is mixed with fuel bottles, the crew has to survive all sorts of incidents and risk their lives for around 50,000 euros per trip.
The submersibles, made in Colombia, are prepared to complete the journey in the depths of the sea without a trace, even if they are spotted by the police. The crew opens the valves in the keel of the boat to allow water to enter and drain to the bottom. So did the three crew members of the Narco submarine, refloated in the Vigo Estuary in 2019, with the drugs it contained, but the Civil Guard thwarted their plans to retrieve it when the storm calmed, leading to the 123 led millions of people. Euro operation. .
The hypothesis used by the Guardia Civil and Police anti-narcotics teams to explain how this vessel could have reached the Arousa Estuary is that it was carrying a cargo of cocaine and was later scuttled, the common practice of drug traffickers to hide evidence. The cache was collected from the two identical 12-meter gliders, one with two engines and the other with three engines of 300 hp each, which surfaced on February 22 last February stranded on two beaches on the coast of Ribeira (A Coruña). . One of them had a ruptured protective tire surrounding the boat. Almost at the same time, another speedboat was sighted in A Costa da Morte when police officers had dispatched an operation to the beaches of Corcubión before a possible release.
It’s the third semi-submersible to be hijacked in Galicia since August 2006, when a ship that couldn’t even navigate was abandoned by drug traffickers off the Cíes Islands. The second, which managed to bring a hideout and three crew members, was found 17 years later. The latter has been spotted coinciding with several anti-drug operations by Colombian police, which have seen three of these vessels arrested in a full-on cocaine transfer.
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