In too deep: the epic, doomed journey of Europe’s first narco-submarine

Former boxer Agustin Alvarez jailed for piloting a sub carrying 3,000kg of cocaine across the Atlantic

Twenty-eight months after it began in a clandestine shipyard deep in the Brazilian Amazon, one of the more unlikely criminal voyages of all time came to an end on Tuesday with the seven sentences handed down by a court in north-west Spain.

Agustin Alvarez, a 31-year-old former Spanish amateur boxing champion, was jailed for 11 years for piloting a semi-submersible narco-submarine" carrying 3,068kg of cocaine worth an estimated 123m (104m) across the Atlantic. His two crewmates, Ecuadorian cousins Luis Tomas Benitez Manzaba and Pedro Roberto Delgado Manzaba, received the same sentence, while four Spaniards who conspired with Alvarez to help guide the sub ashore were jailed for between seven and nine years.