
QUITO – A small submarine used to smuggle drugs was found in Ecuador, near the border with Colombia, during a joint operation by marines and National Police officers, but no arrests were made, officials said.
The vessel was found on Friday by a patrol near El Viento, a border area in the coastal province of Esmeraldas.
The submarine was empty, Northern Command chief Carlos Albuja Obregon said.
Two barracks with the capacity to house about 50 people each were found near the vessel.
The sub was found during a border monitoring operation launched on June 24, Albuja Obregon said.
The submarine was equipped with communications and navigation equipment, as well as a periscope, the military commander said, adding that the vessel was used to smuggle drugs out of the country.
Investigators are trying to determine where the vessel came from, prosecutors said.
In late May, drug enforcement agents found a homemade semi-submersible boat apparently used to smuggle drugs and arrested four people.
The 15-meter (49-foot) vessel was discovered at a shrimp farm in El Oro, a province in southern Ecuador, during a joint operation by two elite police units.
The sub had the capacity to carry at least four tons of drugs and may have been built to smuggle cocaine into Mexico and the United States.
The custom-built semi-submersibles, similar to a submarine, operate with a significant portion of their hulls below the waterline, making it difficult to detect them.
Colombian drug traffickers started using semi-submersibles in 1993. In that year, Colombia’s navy seized one of the vessels off Providencia Island in the Caribbean.
The semi-submersibles cannot dive like a normal submarine, but they are equipped with a valve that, when opened by the operators, quickly floods and scuttles the vessel, causing it and any drugs on board to quickly sink to an unrecoverable depth.
The crew then jumps overboard and, since no drugs are discovered, they avoid prosecution.