POLICE said yesterday they had played a key role in foiling the transport of five tonnes of cocaine from Colombia to Spain, considered one of the biggest international successes in the war against drugs.
A police statement yesterday said the drug squad had received information about the planned haulage of the drug in March last year.
The information said that a large load of cocaine would be shipped from a Latin American country towards an unknown destination.
After verifying the information, police conveyed it to the representative of the US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) based in Cyprus.
The drug squad, DEA and the Spanish authorities then drafted a plan based on the information to arrest the traffickers and seize the cocaine.
A Cypriot officer flew to Spain to co-ordinate the operation.
Around two weeks ago, on August 16, the combined endeavour paid off and seven drug smugglers were arrested in international waters while unloading the cocaine on to another ship.
On the same day Spanish police arrested a further seven people suspected as being part of the same cartel.
Among them was the leader of the gang.
The Director of the Drug Squad’s International Co-operation Bureau, Charitos Yiangou said the operation was considered one of the biggest police successes internationally.
“We believe in this way we contributed in the war against the drug traffickers,” Yiangou said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
