Officers have confiscated nearly 6.5 tonnes of cocaine from a semi-submersible submarine intercepted off the Azores while bound for the Iberian peninsula, Portugal’s judicial police said on Tuesday.

The bust amounts to nearly a quarter of the record 23 tonnes seized across the whole of 2024 in Portugal, often considered one of the first points of entry for the drug into Europe.

Drug traffickers have been caught using semi-submersible vessels, sometimes dubbed “narco-submarines”, to smuggle cocaine while attempting to evade detection.

The vessel was intercepted “in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, around 500 nautical miles (more than 900 kilometres)” south of Portugal’s Azores archipelago, the judicial police statement said.

Five crew members were onboard the vessel, which was used by an international crime ring, the statement added.

Besides the Portuguese navy and airforce, international partners including the US Drug Enforcement Agency, the British National Crime Agency and the Spanish Guardia Civil contributed to the bust, according the police.

Many so-called “narco-submarines” cannot fully dive like a true submarine, but some are able to dip completely underwater.

Most of the cocaine smuggled into Portugal comes across the sea from Latin America.
 

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