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By AFP 
6h ago
Majuro, Marshall Islands – Police in the Marshall Islands found the largest cocaine loot ever recorded in the Pacific nation in an abandoned boat that reached a remote atoll after having been adrift on the high seas, potentially for years.
Attorney General Richard Hickson said the 18-foot (5.5-meter) fiberglass vessel was found on Ailuk Atoll last week with 1,430 pounds (649 kilograms) of cocaine hidden in a compartment below deck.
Hickson said the ship most likely crossed the Pacific from Central or South America. “It could have been adrift for a year or two,” he said.
Police said the drugs, which were in one-kilogram packages marked “KW,” were incinerated on Tuesday, in addition to two packages that will be turned over to the US Drug Enforcement Agency for analysis.
Debris from the Americas is often deposited on the Marshalls after months or years at sea, driven by currents from the Pacific Ocean.
Many other drug caches have been found along the coast of the Marshall Islands over the past two decades, including another in Ailuk, but the last loot was by far the largest.
Law enforcement officials have various theories about the origin of such drugs, including the fact that they were abandoned when smugglers were in danger of being caught or lost in storms.
In January 2014, Salvadoran fisherman José Alvarenga arrived at the Marshalls, more than 13 months after he left the west coast of Mexico with a partner, who died during the trip.
After their discovery, researchers at the University of Hawaii ran 16 computer simulations of drift patterns off the coast of Mexico and found that almost all of them eventually made it to the Marshall Islands.
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