Two Turkish sailors have been jailed for a total of 42 years after a failed attempt to smuggle a huge haul of cocaine into Europe.
The 2,903 kilograms of cocaine was found on a ship intercepted off the east coast of Scotland last year after some swift international co-operation between Britain and Tanzania.
The discovery was the biggest class A drug find ever made in Britain.
The traffickers had hidden the drugs, wrapped in 128 bales together weighing as much as a grown elephant, in a tank deep within the hull of the vessel.
The haul, worth AU$865 million, was being shipped over to the Netherlands after travelling from South America via Guyana and Tenerife, prosecutors said.
British authorities intercepted the cargo off the coast of Aberdeen in April last year after the go-ahead from Tanzania, where the ship was registered, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
"Although there was strong intelligence that the boat was carrying a large volume of drugs, it could not be boarded in international waters by the UK authorities without the permission of the Tanzanian government — something they had never previously granted," the CPS said in a statement.
But the CPS's Criminal Justice Advisor in Tanzania managed to obtain authority "from the highest political level" within 24 hours, it said.
"Without the swift actions of our Criminal Justice Adviser there was a high risk that the vessel may have escaped and we would never have been able to bring these men to justice," said Sue Patten, Head of the CPS International Justice and Organised Crime Division.
Captain Mumin Sahin, 47, and first officer Emin Ozmen, 51, from Istanbul were sentenced to 22 and 20 years in prison respectively at the High Court in Glasgow.
Reuters