Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Cru­cial US in­tel­li­gence pro­vid­ed to lo­cal law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties as­sist­ed them in in­ter­rupt­ing a ma­jor drug pipeline to Eu­rope on Tues­day, af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard in­ter­cept­ed a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar co­caine ship­ment off Trinidad’s north coast.

A joint team of of­fi­cers from the De­fence Force, with Com­man­der Ja­son Kelshall lead­ing the Spe­cial Naval Unit( SPN), dis­cov­ered over 400 kilo­grammes of co­caine hid­den in a spe­cial­ly-made com­part­ment in­side the fu­el tanks of the Throne. The co­caine, which was sealed in wa­ter­tight pack­ages, had an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of TT$160 mil­lion.

As the transna­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion widened yes­ter­day, se­nior in­tel­li­gence sources told Guardian Me­dia that US per­son­nel spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time at Staubles Bay in Ch­aguara­mas, where the im­pound­ed ves­sel re­mained along with its crew of about 19, in­clud­ing 17 In­di­an na­tion­als rang­ing from ages 19-30 years and two Turk­ish na­tion­als.

At least ten of the men were be­ing kept on the ship while the oth­er nine were be­ing de­tained else­where on the Coast Guard base. Many of the In­di­an na­tion­als told au­thor­i­ties they had re­cent­ly mar­ried and just start­ed to work on the tanker.

In­tel­li­gence sources said one of the Turk­ish na­tion­als was picked up along with the drugs ap­prox­i­mate­ly four to five days ago in Venezuela.

“We be­lieve that the Turk­ish man was the mas­ter­mind be­hind this ship­ment and un­der­stand the ship was des­tined to Turkey and it stopped off in Venezuela to pick up the drugs and him, “ the source ex­plained.

The huge tanker ship had no car­go on board, an­oth­er source said.

“What we un­der­stand is that they ex­pect­ed to drain the oth­er fu­el tanks to see if there is any fur­ther con­tra­band there and con­tin­ue to search the ship for an­oth­er two days for any­thing else il­le­gal.”

The source said crit­i­cal in­tel­li­gence pro­vid­ed to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties by US per­son­nel help the lo­cal law en­force­ment in­ter­cept the tanker be­fore it got out of T&T’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

Al­though the Ma­rine Traf­fic: Glob­al Ship­ping Track­ing In­tel­li­gence web­site in­di­cat­ed that the ship’s fi­nal des­ti­na­tion was ex­pect­ed to be Belem in Brazil, sources said that was not the case in this in­stance. The source said the ship had tra­versed Caribbean wa­ters in the last two months and had been to Ja­maica in one in­stance. The tanker, ac­cord­ing to the site, left Guayaquil, Ecuador and passed through the Pana­ma Canal sev­er­al weeks ago.

A US in­tel­li­gence source fa­mil­iar with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said he could not com­ment on the mat­ter.

Ear­li­er this month, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to pro­tect the Amer­i­can peo­ple from the dead­ly scourge of il­le­gal nar­cotics by beef­ing up the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the South­ern Caribbean with the help of 22 part­ner na­tions - which in­cludes Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Trump said then, “We’re de­ploy­ing ad­di­tion­al navy de­stroy­ers, com­bat ships, air­craft and he­li­copters, Coast Guard cut­ters and Air Force sur­veil­lance air­craft, dou­bling our ca­pa­bil­i­ties in the re­gion.”

In April last year, Cus­toms and T&T Coast Guard of­fi­cials re­cov­ered close to $120 mil­lion worth of co­caine hid­den aboard the tanker His­pania Spir­it af­ter it docked at the At­lantic Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) port in Point Fortin. Some sev­en bales of co­caine were found at­tached to the rud­der of that ship.