One ton of cocaine washed ashore in Borkum, northern Germany

Admin I Thursday, July 05, 2024

 

BORKUM – A large quantity of drugs has washed up on the German North Sea island of Borkum, prosecutors said on Thursday.

In April, a holidaymaker had discovered several suspicious sacks tied together with a life jacket on the beach and alerted the police.

The public prosecutor’s office in Aurich has now confirmed that the sacks contained a total of around one ton of cocaine.

It is one of the largest known drug finds on the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony in recent years.

The Federal Criminal Police Office has taken over the investigation, a spokeswoman for the Aurich public prosecutor’s office told dpa.

“We are investigating in all directions,” she said, without providing further details. Where the parcels came from, why they ended up on the beach and whether there are any suspects in the investigation remained unclear.

The discovery of the bags had already become known through media reports in April. However, the investigating authorities had so far left open the question of whether the packages actually contained drugs.

In recent years, drugs have repeatedly been washed up and discovered in bags on the East Frisian North Sea coast. In 2021, for example, workers discovered 25 kilograms of cocaine on a dyke foreshore in the district of Aurich. 

A similar quantity of drugs had been found on the island of Baltrum shortly before. Packets of cocaine also washed up on island beaches in early 2017.