Spanish Customs Surveillance boarded the 24-metre Portuguese-flagged fishing vessel Eiskos about 40 nautical miles south of Almería on Sunday 23 November 2014 and seized about 20 tons of hashish from its hold.[1][2] The boarding party worked from the Navy patrol vessel Cazadora with Portuguese authorisation and found the hold full of bales of the kind typically used to traffic hashish.[1] As officers boarded, the crew set fire to a can of petrol in an attempt to burn the boat and destroy the drugs; officers put the fire out, but two crew members were injured in the blast and evacuated by Maritime Rescue for hospital treatment.[1][2]
Ten crew members were arrested: five Portuguese, two Senegalese, one Spaniard, one Guinean and one Ghanaian.[1] The first official estimate put the haul at 10,000 to 15,000 kilos before weighing; the Portuguese Judicial Police later put it at about 20 tons.[1][2]
The seizure was the sea end of Operation Adiada, a months-long investigation by Portugal’s Judicial Police and DCIAP prosecutors with Spain’s Tax Agency, Civil Guard and National Police, supported by CITCO, MAOC-N and the Spanish Navy and Air Force.[1][2] The alleged leader of the network was arrested later alongside eleven searches, in which officers also seized a 50-metre refrigeration ship meant for future transports and two cars.[2] The Tax Agency said Adiada was its eighth large hashish seizure on the Eastern Mediterranean route since June 2013, passing 100 tons in total.[1]
