On the night of Friday to Saturday March 4, a French Navy vessel, the Antilles-Guyane
La Combattante
patrol vessel, intercepted a fishing vessel off Barbados with 1.7 tonnes of cocaine on board.
"
This third seizure of the year 2023 brings the FAA's balance sheet to nearly 3.2 tons of narcotics removed from the distribution networks
", welcomed the armed forces in the West Indies in a message posted on Twitter.
Eight people on board the boat were arrested.
The suspects were later handed over to Venezuela, their country of origin, along with the drugs.
The cocaine will be destroyed in the presence of a representative of the embassy, explains France Info Martinique.
On March 1, a report presented by Gérald Darmanin notified that cocaine seizures had increased by 5% in 2022 to reach 27.7 tons.
Three quarters of them are carried out by sea, and 55% of seizures come from the West Indies and Guyana, storage and rebound areas for cocaine produced in South America.
