8 tonnes of hashish seized from the Squilla off Spain in SDEA operation
Spanish and Scottish officers boarded the British-registered trawler Squilla in the Atlantic off western Spain on 5 June 2005 and found eight tonnes of cannabis worth an estimated £24 million. Four crew were arrested aboard and three more people in Scotland in the SDEA-led Operation Bouzas.
🇬🇧 Atlantic Ocean off western Spain; vessel taken to Cadiz · United Kingdom
The British-registered fishing boat Squilla was stopped in the Atlantic off western Spain on Sunday 5 June 2005, ending Operation Bouzas, a surveillance operation run over the previous three months and coordinated by the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency.[1]The joint Spanish-British operation followed a British request for cooperation through Europol, and a Spanish customs vessel intercepted the trawler, which Scottish officers had tailed since it left Morocco bound for the United Kingdom.[1][2]
Officers found eight tonnes of cannabis worth an estimated £24 million stowed under the Squilla’s decks, a haul the authorities believed was destined for Scotland.[1][2]Four crew members were arrested aboard, two Scots aged 49 and 43 with a Spaniard and an Estonian, while searches at addresses across Scotland brought two further arrests in Glasgow and one in Perth.[1]The vessel was taken to Cadiz in southern Spain.[1]
Detective Superintendent Campbell Corrigan, the agency’s head of operations, called the seizure a “major body blow” to a Scotland-based organised crime group, and Spain’s Interior Ministry said it could not rule out more arrests in Scotland and Spain.[1]
The sources date the boarding to the Sunday before their 7 and 8 June reports; 5 June is inferred as the event date.
The Mirror places the boarding in waters off Lisbon while the BBC says the Atlantic off western Spain; this report follows the BBC.
The BBC reports the three land arrests as two in Glasgow and one in Perth while the Mirror places all three in Glasgow.
No charges, trial or sentencing outcome were reported in the opened sources, which note only that more arrests could follow.
Two further BBC article photographs of the boarding were never archived and their original addresses serve nothing, so only the nine recoverable gallery and article photographs are listed.
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