US forces board tanker in Indian Ocean that fled Trump’s Venezuela blockade
Al Jazeera
Panamanian-flagged Veronica III left Venezuela on the same day as the US capture of President Nicolas Maduro in January.
United States forces have boarded another tanker in the Indian Ocean that was sanctioned for carrying Venezuelan oil, according to the Pentagon.
In a post on X on Sunday, the Pentagon said the Panamanian-flagged Veronica III had “tried to defy” US President Donald Trump’s blockade of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to “slip away”.
But, “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down”, it said.
The post included a video of US forces boarding a helicopter and then boarding the tanker ship.
Venezuela faced US sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure President Nicolas Maduro, before US special forces abducted the Venezuelan leader in January.
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