Man to be quizzed over record cocaine haul

A British man wanted for questioning over a botched plot to bring a record haul of cocaine into Ireland, has been arrested in Portugal.

Londoner Lee Dryden, 49, was detained on the Algarve after 180 kilos of cocaine worth an estimated €10m were found on board a nearby yacht.

Scotland Yard detectives want to quiz Dryden, from Bermondsey in south London, over a doomed plot to import €440m of the drug into Ireland five years ago.

The cocaine was bought from producers in south America by a gang who then sailed it across the Atlantic in a catamaran called Lucky Day.

The smuggling operation ended in disaster after an inflatable boat sent to pick up the drugs ran out of fuel and sank in storms 30 nautical miles off the coast of Co Cork.

At the time it was the largest drugs seizure in the history of Ireland and one of the largest in Europe.

Former Scotland Yard drugs squad officer Michael Daly, one of six gang members who have been convicted of or admitted being part of the plot, was jailed last year for 22 years for his part in masterminding the operation.

Dryden, who was thought to have been hiding out in Spain, was detained by police in the Algarve resort of Olhao.

A second Brit and two Germans were detained with him.

Portuguese police made the arrests after a surveillance operation on a German-owned yacht moored at a coastal island called Culatra Island in the Ria Formosa National Park near the town of Olhao.

They put a watch on the boat after a tip-off when it docked last week after a 40-day voyage from the Caribbean.

The two Germans under arrest were allegedly spotted making several trips from the yacht to shore in a river taxi with small black rucksacks and handing them over to two Brits waiting by Olhao quayside.

Detectives arrested one of the two British men outside a cafe in Olhao after stopping him and finding several packages containing a total of 15 kilos of cocaine in his rucksack.

They subsequently boarded the yacht, called Delfin, and arrested the two Germans on board after finding 160 kilos of cocaine still on board hidden under a false ceiling.

An apartment in Olhao was allegedly being used to store the drugs being taken off the yacht.

The four men under arrest are aged between 34 and 68.