ATHENS, Aug 24 (AFP) - Greek police announced Tuesday the arrest of a seventh suspect in the seizure of a record quantity of cocaine and the finding of a further huge amount of the drug.
The police said the man was arrested at dawn aboard a luxury yacht off the island of Kithira, to the south of the country. The semi-official ANA news agency identified him as Nikitas Kyriakoulis, 51, owner of a yachting marina at Kalamata, in the southwest of Greece.
Earlier, police had announced the arrest of four Greeks, one of whom, identifed as Constantin Christos, 40, also has French nationality, an Albanian and an Italian.
The gang allegedly unloaded 865 kilos (1,887 pounds) of cocaine from a sailboat, the Pluton, at the marina after a journey from the French West Indian island of Martinique, where Christos and Kyriakoulis were reported by ANA to have had business dealings.
The haul was described as the largest seizure of the drug ever carried out in Greece.
In their searches at Kalamata police found a further 180 kilos (400 pounds) of cocaine hidden near a house where part of the first seizure had been made Monday. They also said they were looking for an eighth suspect, a Russian with fake Greek identity papers.
They said he and three of the people arrested earlier -- a Greek man, a Greek woman and the Albanian -- had sailed the Pluton to Greece after it took delivery of the drug in Martinique on July 1.
Police said a surveillance operation involving the United States, France, Spain and Italy was mounted as the alleged traffickers sailed across the Atlantic.
They pounced the day after the boat arrived at Kalamata and made the first arrests as the drug was being unloaded, Police say it was to have been sold locally and elsewhere in Europe.
The man arrested off Kithira and his six alleged accomplices are due to appear before the state prosecutor in Athens Tuesday evening, legal sources said.