VIDEO: Colombian Navy intercepts largest narco sub yet

30-meter long narco sub was sinking when boarded by Colombian Marines. [Coumbian Navy photo]

A U.S. court may have just sentenced Colombia’s “Prince of the Semisubmersibles” to a hefty prison term, but that doesn’t mean that the narco sub problem has gone away. On May 12, the Columbian Navy reported it had intercepted the largest narco sub seized since its first capture of one of the semi-submersible low profile vessels in 1993.

Measuring 30 meters long by three meters wide, it was carrying over three tonnes of cocaine and was the third such vessel intercepted by Colombian authorities this year.

The seizure was made in a joint operation with the Columbian Air Force that had international support. After the radars of Colombian Navy ships deployed in the Pacific Ocean detected a suspicious vessel navigating in the South Pacific area, monitoring began with international support and a Colombian Air Force aircraft, and Coast Guard units carrying Columbia marines interdicted the vessel.

Despite adverse meteorological conditions, the marines managed to seize the semi-submersible, which had begun to sink due to water ingress into its the engine space.

The three Colombian nationals on board were rescued. After an inspection, military personnel recovered 102 packages of narcotics and tried to refloat the semi-submersible, but without any success and it was sunk so as not present a hazard to navigation in the area.

The three rescued crew members, aged 63, 54 and 45, said they were forced by a drug trafficking organization to embark and take the semi-submersible with the cocaine to Central America.

They were transferred to the district of Tumaco – Nariño, where they were brought before the competent authorities, who carried out tests that confirmed that the substances seized were cocaine hydrochloride and had a net weight of 3,058 kilograms.

To put that in perspective, in one of the largest narco sub interdictions by U.S authorities, in April 2021 a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Air and Marine Operations (AMO) aircraft assisted the U.S. Coast Guard seizure of approximately 2,500 kilograms of cocaine from a semi-submersible vessel.