Spanish police have seized a record 30 tons of cocaine from a cargo ship off the coast of Africa, judicial authorities said on Thursday, in what they described as the largest single shipment of the drug ever intercepted anywhere.
The seizure was carried out in cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Dutch police.
The drugs were packed into 1,279 bundles and had a street value of more than €812 million ($953 million), the Canary Islands judiciary added. If sold on the street, the quantity of cocaine found last Friday would fetch as much as €1.5 billion, it said.
A judge in the Canary Islands has ordered pre-trial detention for all 23 crew members of the ship, the Arconian, a judicial spokesman added.
According to ship tracking services, the 90-metre-long vessel, flying the Comoros flag, was en route from Sierra Leone in West Africa to Libya when it was intercepted off the coast of Western Sahara.
Authorities believe the drugs, which most likely originated in South America, were to be transferred at sea to smaller speedboats, which would then transport the cocaine on to Europe.
