Cocaine Bust on Fake Dakar Rally Truck

Spanish police have seized 800 kilos (1,750 pounds) of cocaine from a truck that posed as an official backup vehicle during the Dakar Rally in Argentina and Chile this year.

A police statement Tuesday says seven people were arrested in the operation, which was run in cooperation with Argentine police.

Police said the drug was destined for Spain's Mediterranean island of Ibiza.

They said the gang decorated the truck with the rally's logo and fake advertising so it could pass as a technical vehicle. They say the vehicle was then shipped in January from Bilbao to Buenos Aires, where it picked up the drug and stayed with the sport event until it finished.

They said the truck made it through customs to return to Bilbao, where it was stopped Friday by police.

German police secure their largest cocaine haul

German police say they have seized 1.3 tons of cocaine worth euro40 million ($54 million), the largest haul in the country's history.

Police in the northern city of Hamburg said Tuesday they found at the port 1,244 packs of the highest quality cocaine hidden in a container from Paraguay full of sawdust briquettes.

Police say seven men aged between 29 and 35 were arrested in connection with Monday's seizure. Police had been investigating a group of drug traffickers since last November.

They say a 35-year-old Peruvian has been charged with delivering cocaine several times to a 31-year-old man in Hamburg who passed it on to buyers in Hamburg and the Netherlands.

Their names were not released in line with German privacy laws.