El Salvador's Navy Posts Record 6.6-Tonne Cocaine Bust
The naval forces of El Salvador have completed what they report to be the largest cocaine bust in the country's history - a multi-tonne haul on an aging workboat in international waters.
According to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, the Fuerza Naval de El Salvador seized a smuggling vessel at a position about 380 nautical miles southwest of the nation's shores - far outside of the country's EEZ. He identified the ship as the FMS Eagle, an offshore vessel with a stern ramp.
On board, Bukele claimed, the boarding team found 6.6 tonnes of cocaine in 330 packages. The drugs were concealed in the ship's ballast tanks, he said, and divers had to go in to recover the goods.
Bukele put the shipment value in the range of $165 million, or $25,000 per kilo; landed prices in Europe - the reference market in recent years - have been running somewhat lower, in the range of $18,000 per kilo or less.
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The boarding team detained 10 crewmembers in connection with the shipment, all from South and Central America. The vessel, Bukele indicated, would be seized by the government; the fate of the crew was not stated, but under Bukele, El Salvador has become famous for its tough-on-crime incarceration policies.
Bukele, who has described himself as the "coolest dictator in the world," is one of Latin America's most prominent supporters of the current U.S. administration. His government's effort to seize a drug vessel far offshore is in alignment with a top Washington priority - upping interdictions of smugglers in the Eastern Pacific.
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