In three decades, the Navy has seized 228 such ships, which depart loaded with tons of drugs from the Pacific Ocean to the United States. Measuring more than 30 m long and three meters wide, it was carrying nearly 3 tons of cocaine.
Three Colombian suspects arrested in this latest seizure claimed to have been "forced by an organization of drug traffickers to embark and drive the semi-submersible with the alkaloid" Colombian legislation punishes the use, construction, marketing, possession and transport of semi- submersibles with up to 14 years' imprisonment.