‘Insane journeys’: inside the narco-subs that cross oceans carrying hundreds of millions of pounds of cocaine | Drugs trade

WHat was crossing the minds of sailors, embarking on a trip they had to fear not surviving? How did they say goodbye to their loved ones before leaving? What had pushed them to accept such a mission? The answers to these questions, such as the identity of the sailors, remain a mystery of the Brazilian police.

What the investigators are certain is the goal of the ship: a “Narco-Submarine” similar to a dungeon which, according to them, was days to start a three-week infernal odyssey through the Atlantic carrying hundreds of millions of pounds of cocaine to Europe.

“You could pay me as much money as you loved it and I admit that I would not go … on such a crazy trip,” said Fernando Casarin, the federal police chief whose special forces recently captured the Narco-Sub on the eve of his departure from the Amazon.

“You wonder if [for these sailors] It is a question of great courage or a total lack of conscience of what they get started, “added Casarin, who is responsible for the vast state of Pará where the submarine was found in May in a secret shipyard on the island of Marajó.

The Colombian drug lords began to use Narco-Subs-in reality, semi-sous-dual handles that move just under the surface of the water with only their cockpit that exceeds-to pass cocaine across the Caribbean towards Mexico and the United States in the 1980s.

More recently, crime patterns have become much more ambitious, commanding fiberglass creations to send huge cocaine trips to thousands of kilometers to the coast of Portugal and Spain.

Casarin said the attractive profits involved in cocaine traffic explained why South American criminals continue to use submarines, despite the risks.

One kilo of cocaine could be purchased for $ 1,000 to $ 2,000 (£ 740 at £ 1,480) on the Brazilian border with Colombia, the best cocaine producer in the world. In Europe, where consumption soars, the same amount could be sold for around $ 60,000. A submarine that has managed to smuggiate 5 or 6 tonnes of drugs in Europe could bring 200 million dollars to $ 250 million to its owners. “The profits are astronomical,” said Casarin.

Javier Romero, a Spanish journalist who is one of the main columnists in the Narco-Sub industry, suspects South American shots that had inaugurated the path of underwater traffic in the late 90s.

But the police confirmed the existence of the route until 2019, when the first machine of this type was apprehended from the Iberian peninsula after its three occupants endured a 27 -day nightmare from their starting point in the Brazilian Amazon.

Romero, who works for the newspaper La Voz de Galicia, thought that the phenomenon had been considerably intensified in recent months, with “an increase in activity” during the summer when the number of Narco-Sub alerts received by Spanish police has gone from one every three months to more than five per month.

In mid-September, Spanish police seized 3,500 kg of cocaine which had been delivered to the Galician coast and arrested three Colombian suspects-although their Narco-Sub was nowhere.

Three months after the Brazilian Narco-Sub was captured on Marajó, the Guardian had access to the 60-foot ship. Even on dry lands, climbing in its cramped control room through a small hatch is a frightening and claustrophobic experience.

Two superimposed beds in narrow wood, on each side of the wheelhouse, offer the only rest space. A plastic windshield would have been the only window of sailors in the world while they were concerned through the waves to Europe at around 16 km / h.

Osvaldo Scilezi, who heads the anti-drug division of the federal police, said that if most people assumed that drowning was the greatest risk of traveling in a Narco-Sub, he thought it was enough. “You have a very powerful engine in there … and the exhaust pipes are very roughly manufactured. There is nothing to stop the combustion gases fleeing in the ship and all asphyxiating them to death,” said Scalezi.

In the wooden arc of the ship, where the drugs would have been stored, was seated the only comfort of creature that his crew would have appreciated during their transatlantic trip of 6,000 km. A 700 -liter tank for drinking water, a freezer and a portable air conditioning unit to cool the stifling machine similar to the greenhouse.

As he looked at wood and fiberglass hulk, Casarin compared the expedition to the death of the crew to that of American astronauts who made the first lunar landing in 1969. “It was at this level,” he said. “It’s a crazy pirate life.”

The nameless blue boat was discovered two months after an almost identical semi-submersible was captured near the Azores, during a joint operation in March involving Portuguese, Spanish, American and British authorities. In addition to 6 tonnes of cocaine, the ship carried five men, including three Brazilians from the Pará region.

For Casarin, the arrest of these three Brazilians reinforced the idea that Pará and the neighboring state of Amapá became “a hub for the construction of this type of ship”.

Romero said that the jungles and mangroves far from the region were the ideal place to hide “illegal shipyards” which produced Narco-Subs. But it is far from the only place where such ships are built in South America – and Europe is no longer their most distant destination.

Henry Shuldiner, an Insight Crime researcher who wrote a recent report on Narco-Subs, recalled how the Colombian police intercepted a semi-submersible in late 2024 while crossing the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand, a journey that takes at least double the time to go to Europe.

In January, a Sabordé Narco-Sub presented itself on the coast of Sierra Leone, strengthening the conviction of Shuldiner that the Narco-Sub industry became global.

Despite the billions of billions, little of this money finds its way to the sailors who run the Narco-sous-subdits across the Atlantic.

Casarin thought that Brazilian sailors earned only 30,000 to 50,000 reais (£ 4,000 at £ 7,000) for such a trip. Romero, the author of a book on Narco-Subs called Black Tide Operation, said that the Equatorian sailors of the first ship seized in Europe had been offered about $ 15,000.

“Narcotrafficking is an operating industry, it has always been,” said the journalist, who calls the branching ships of the “fattened coffins”.

“Simply imagine spending hours, or days, stuck in one of these things,” said Romero. “It’s total madness.”