Us Navy Seizes $4 Million Worth Of Heroin From Iranian Sailors
The US Navy seized a stateless fishing vessel on Monday, believed to have originated in Iran, carrying $4 million worth of heroin in the Arabian Sea.
The US Navy seized a stateless fishing vessel on Monday, believed to have originated in Iran, carrying $4 million worth of heroin in the Arabian Sea.
The spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet, Timothy Hawkins, said on Thursday that the vessel probably came from Iran because all nine crew members identified themselves as Iranian nationals.
According to Commander Hawkins, about 385 kilograms of heroin were confiscated in the bust by the USS Tempest and USS Typhoon patrol ships.
The drugs were destroyed at sea by US forces and the crew members were released, a statement said.
Last week the US Navy seized a vessel in the Arabian Sea with thousands of weapons and a large cargo of ammunition on board. This vessel was also believed to have originated in Iran.
About two week earlier the US Navy had rescued five Iranian sailors following in an explosion on their vessel, transiting the Gulf of Oman, and seized its cargo of more than two tons of hashish, methamphetamine and heroin, worth over $14.7 million.
"In 2021, the international Combined Task Force 150 has seized illegal drugs worth more than $193 million (at regional wholesale prices) during counter-narcotics operations at sea… This is a higher total value than the amount of drugs the task force interdicted in the previous four years combined”, Thursday's statement added.
