U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker on the Indian Ocean after it was tracked from the Caribbean Sea, officials announced Tuesday.
The Pentagon stated that U.S. military forces boarded the Bertha vessel overnight without incident, according to a post on X. Video footage included in the post shows military helicopters flying around the vessel.
“Three boats ran and now all three have been captured,” the Department of War stated. “The vessel was operating in defiance of President [Donald] Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade. From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it. No other nation has the global reach, endurance, or will to enforce sanctions at this distance.”
The post added that the military would continue to “deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
The Bertha, which flies under a Cook Islands flag, is linked to Shanghai Legendary Ship Management Company Limited and falls under sanctions imposed in January 2020, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas by U.S. forces in January, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration would move to enforce a quarantine of sanctioned oil tankers operating to and from Venezuela.
Hellbound and Down 