Colombia: 3 tons of cocaine on board, the navy seizes the largest narco submarine in its history

$103 million. This is the amount that drug traffickers would have lost aboard the largest submarine intercepted by the Colombian navy in history. Measuring more than 30 m long and three meters wide, it was carrying nearly 3 tons of cocaine.

The semi-submersible was stopped on Tuesday as it headed to Central America, one of the busiest routes for illegal traffic to the United States. The images released by the authorities showed the long boat on the waters, as well as its goods landed on land, hundreds of packages of narcotics labeled "Toyota" - traffickers like to give a signature, often chosen among the world's major brands, to their deliveries - and, in the middle, three captured men.

AFP / COLOMBIAN ARMY

This is the largest semi-submersible identified since the beginning of this type of seizure in 1993, in the country the largest producer of cocaine in the world. In three decades, the Navy has seized 228 such ships, which leave loaded with tons of drugs from the Pacific Ocean to the United States or even cross the Atlantic to Europe.

Prison sentences of 14 years

The 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 to Central America". The three men, aged 63, 54 and 45, were taken to Tumaco (south) to be handed over to justice.

Manufactured clandestinely, these boats, both rustic and lightweight, move close to the surface of the water, travel longer distances than the authorities' speedboats and are difficult to spot. Colombian legislation punishes the use, construction, marketing, possession and transport of semi-submersibles with up to 14 years' imprisonment.

After half a century of the US-funded and supported war on drugs, Colombia continues to reach record levels of cocaine production. In 2021, coca cultivation, from which the drug is extracted, covered more than 204,000 ha, and cocaine hydrochloride production amounted to 1,400 tons, according to the UN.