Spanish police announced on Thursday February 10 that they had dismantled a network of drug traffickers who simulated boat damage, and even killer whale attacks, to get towed and smuggle hashish into ports with complete impunity.
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After loading the drugs into the cabin of a sailboat on the Moroccan coast, this network claimed, once in Spanish waters, to have been the victim of damage or an accident, the police explained in a press release. Rescue at sea then towed the boat to Andalusian ports in southern Spain, where the drugs were unloaded little by little and stored in a cache awaiting reshipment abroad. A sailboat used by this network had anchored in the port of Barbate, about fifty kilometers from Cadiz, after claiming that it had “was the victim of an attack by killer whales while crossing the Strait of Gibraltar“, said the police.
The investigation was opened in the summer of 2021, when a boat – with several people on board known to have had criminal records related to drug trafficking – was spotted carrying out “suspicious movementsat sea. Two people were arrested and 172 kilos of drugs as well as more than 63,000 euros were seized as part of this investigation. In September 2020, Spain temporarily banned sailboats from part of its northwest coast after around 50 killer whale attacks. Killer whales can weigh up to six tons and measure almost 10 meters in length, the size of a bus.
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