Spanish
San Juan.- The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) and Coast Guard reported this Thursday that they seized 449.3 kilos of cocaine valued at 23.7 million U.S. dollars on a boat on Wednesday.
According to authorities, they seized 449.3 kilos (990.71 pounds), with an estimated black market value of 23.7 million U.S. dollars (3.8 billion Jamaican dollars) on a suspicious vessel.
You may be interested in: Contraband cigarettes and adulterated alcohol seized in La Romana
The uniformed officers began a chase and the sailors on board the ship threw several packages into the sea while fleeing. The Coast Guard recovered the contraband and handed it over to the anti-drug Police for processing. The IDF did not specify whether the occupants of the vessel were arrested and described the seizure as a major blow to regional drug trafficking networks. This event occurs while the Caribbean country is going through a recovery process after the ravages caused by Hurricane Melissa, which hit the island on October 28 as category 5 (the maximum on the Saffir Simpson scale) and left at least 45 dead, 15 missing and catastrophic damage. Also, the seizure occurs after the deployment of U.S. Army ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which began in August near Venezuela and Colombia, in an offensive ordered by U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, called 'Southern Spear' and in which more than 80 people have already died.
