QCOSTARICA – Canada’s Department of National Defence says a Canadian naval vessel was part of a large drug bust last month in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Costa Rica.
HMCS Whitehorse, working with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy, intercepted more than 5,200 kilograms of cocaine in international waters from a coastal freighter. National Defence says the crew of the freighter began throwing bales overboard when a patrolling U.S. Navy vessel approached. The Whitehorse and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter were called in to join the operation, which lasted three days.
National Defence says the seizure could not be divulged until now to avoid jeopardizing the investigation into the matter.
HMCS Whitehorse is part of Canada’s contribution to a multinational effort to prevent drug trafficking in the Caribbean basin, the eastern Pacific and the waters of Central America.
Closer to shore, Cost Rica’s Ministerio de Seguridad Pública (MSP) reports the confiscation, in two seizures, of 1.815 kilos of compressed marijuana and 538 kilos of cocaine in the Pacific and the Caribbean.
Authorities say the 1.815 kilos of marijuana where hidden inside the fishing boat ‘Purple Ice’, located near Cieneguita, off the coast of Lim ón.
The second seizure took place in Mata Palo de Golfito, in the province of Puntarenas, on the Pacific coast. With the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, the 538 kilos were confiscated from the ‘Captain Byron’.
