A fishing vessel laden with more than 650 kilogrammes of cocaine and bound for Barbados was intercepted on the high seas before it could make landfall with its illicit cargo.
The Barbados Police Service narcotics division carried out the operation with help from the Barbados Coast Guard that netted the more than $33 million worth of drugs.
Three fishermen, two from St Michael and one from St Philip, were arrested while the boat was out to sea. Once it landed during the wee hours of Thursday, they were taken into custody as investigators continued their probe.
Sources said the vessel was registered in Barbados and was on its way into the island with the huge cargo of wrapped contraband.
The seizure, several nautical miles off Barbados, is one of the largest in the country’s history.
In 2024, two men were charged in connection with smuggling into the country through Grantley Adams International Airport, 17.60 kilogrammes of cocaine with a street value of $880 000 on September 23 of that year.
Then last June, the court deported Naseerdean Bacchus Ali, a 75-yearold Guyanese national, for the second time after he had served time for drug trafficking, and co-conspirator Kamalodeen Alli, 44. They confessed to possessing, trafficking and importing 17.35 kilogrammes of cocaine on November 30, 2020. They also admitted to possessing, trafficking and importing 17.5 kilogrammes of cannabis on the same date.
The two spent four years and seven months on remand and after deductions, it was deemed that they had served their time.
In February last year, fishermen Henderson Oscar Drayton, of Wellington Street, The City, and Troy Sylvester King, of Ashby Land, Oistins, Christ Church, after pleading guilty to having within the island’s territorial waters, 19.76 kilogrammes of cannabis, having a traffickable quantity of the drug and importation, all on August 22, 2021, were jailed. The drugs had an estimated street value of $83 200. ( AC)
