The crew of an Icelandic fishing vessel off the southeast coast of Iceland on Saturday notified police about the whereabouts of the Belgian yacht Sirtaki, which was carrying 109 kilos of narcotics to the country. The fishermen thought it looked suspicious.
Fishing boats docked at Höfn, close to where one of the men involved in the drug smuggling case was arrested. The photo is unrelated to the story. By Páll Stefánsson.
Coast Guard cruiser Týr chased the yacht on Sunday, finally catching up with it 74 nautical miles west northwest of Mykines, the westernmost island of the Faroe Islands archipelago.
The crew of three, two Icelanders and one Dutch citizen, were arrested and brought to Iceland onboard Týr. The cruiser followed the yacht to shore in Eskifjördur, east Iceland, where it arrived this morning, Morgunbladid reports.
Three other men, who are all Icelandic, have also been arrested in connection to this case—the largest drug bust in Iceland’s criminal history. They are accused of having fetched the drugs from the yacht while it was docked near the island of Papey.
The men used an inflatable boat to get to the yacht, which they kept at the harbor in Djúpivogur under the pretext of being amateur divers.
The 109 kilos of drugs comprised of amphetamines, marijuana, hashish and thousands of ecstasy tablets, as Capital Region Police Chief Stefán Eiríksson explained in a press conference yesterday.
It has been a while since police prevented marijuana from being smuggled into the country. They therefore concluded that there is currently a “shortage” of marijuana on the underground market since police have unearthed extensive cannabis cultivation in Iceland in recent months.
Click here to read more about last weekend’s drug bust and here to read more about cannabis cultivation in Iceland.
