Prosecutor Julio Villareal said the operation was one of the biggest in Panamanian waters to date, telling reporters on Tuesday that the 13 tons of drugs were “in this case, cocaine,” according to a report by CBS News.
The Panamanian prosecutor’s office shared several photos of the alleged drugs in a social media post, adding that a total of 11,562 drug packages were seized.
“A total of 11,562 packages containing suspected illicit substances were seized in an operation carried out by the Drug Prosecutor’s Office with units from [Aeronaval Panama, the country’s national security force responsible for air and naval operations],” Villareal’s office announced.
The prosecutor’s office added that during the interception, which occurred “southwest of San José Island … ten people of different nationalities were apprehended.”
Villareal explained that Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, and Nicaraguans were among those arrested from the ferry, which was heading to the United States from Colombia, CBS News noted.
In 2023, Panama — a transit point for cocaine from South America to the United States, which is said to be the world’s largest consumer — reportedly seized a total of 119 metric tons of drugs.
Panama is not the only nation to have recently confiscated large amounts of drugs from boats.
Last month, Spanish authorities said they captured 6.5 tons of cocaine and arrested nine people after they raided a ship off the coast of the Canary Islands following a tip-off from the United States.
That same month, a Pakistani navy ship found narcotics worth more than $972 million on sailboats in the Arabian Sea. And in September, the French navy seized nearly ten tons of cocaine worth more than $600 million from a boat off the coast of West Africa, CBS News reported.
The U.S. Coast Guard, meanwhile, has said that it seized more than half a million pounds of cocaine from ocean vessels during this fiscal year, making it the largest amount captured in the government agency’s history.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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