4.5 metric tons of cocaine on board

Spanish police on Monday reported detaining a ship that was sailing from Latin America with 4.5 metric tons of cocaine on board.
A police official said the cocaine was presumably intended for drug dealers in the northwestern province of Galicia, and that several local residents suspected of complicity were arrested along with the ship's crew.
Galicia's mafia, one of the most powerful in Western Europe, is notorious for its involvement in drug trafficking, and deals especially in Latin American cocaine and hashish from Morocco.
More than seven tons of cocaine was seized off Spain's coast from the Russian cargo ship Tamsaar in 1999. This is the largest haul to have been seized by Spanish police so far. The Tamsaar crew were sentenced to ten years in prison for drug smuggling

organized crime group which brought young women from Russia to Spain and forced them to work as prostitutes

Spanish police have broken up an organized crime group which brought young women from Russia to Spain and forced them to work as prostitutes.
"Twelve members of the gang, mainly Russian and Uruguayan nationals, who controlled four night clubs in northeastern Spain, have been detained on charges of assisting prostitution and illegal migration, forgery, and sexual harassment," a police official said.
He said the ring, led by a Uruguayan national, sent hundreds of young women from Russia to Spain, and that gang members raped them and forced them to use cocaine.
The operation was carried out by the Spanish National Police and Barcelona city police.
This is not the first time this year that police in Spain have clamped down on international criminal gangs trafficking women from Russia and subsequently forcing them into prostitution.
In July, Spanish police busted a gang that lured Russian women with job offers and then forced them into prostitution in the province of Almeria, southern Spain. Police then arrested a total of nine people, six of them Russian nationals and three Spanish.
In April, 40 Russian women were freed from sex slavery in a special police operation in Costa Brava, a coastal region near Barcelona. Most of the women were from St. Petersburg and had been held captive under threat of physical violence.
Seven people, including the gang leader - an Albanian national - were arrested and face charges of human-trafficking and organizing a prostitution ring. The gang also included three Russians, one Kosovo Albanian, and one Armenian.
Criminal groups involved in the illegal sex trafficking normally recruit women with offers of legal work abroad, and promise to sort out their visas. The women are then forced into prostitution to pay off their debts, and their documents are stolen.

Russian national 15 burglaries in Almeria

Police in southeastern Spain have detained a Russian national on suspicion of committing at least 15 burglaries, a police department representative said Friday.
"The Russian national was arrested red-handed with a laptop computer after a theft in the town of Al-Ejido in the province of Almeria," the police spokesperson said, but declined to reveal his name in the interests of the investigation.
He said that a Spaniard, who received stolen goods in exchange for cocaine, was also arrested. A search revealed at least 100 pieces of jewelry, presumably stolen by the Russian.

Greco Organised Crime Unit for the Cadiz Costa

The Greco unit, which specialises in fighting organised crime will be based in Chiclana. It will be responsible for controlling the western part of Andalucía, as its counterpart in Málaga does on the Costa del Sol. Indeed many crime experts believe the success of the Málaga unit has been responsible for the increased presence of organised crime gangs in Cádiz as they have moved west to avoid the attentions of the Costa del Sol squad.
Sr. Alonso made the announcement during a speech at a conference on organised crime held in Jerez. He stressed that the government will not tolerate this type of activity, which includes drug smuggling, people trafficking and money laundering. He praised the work of the police and the Guardia Civil, saying that the authorities are trying to improve their resources to make their fight against crime less difficult.

Spanish Home invasion robbers fuelled by drugs

Spanish Home invasion robbers work more often at night and on weekends when homes are more likely to be occupied. The Costa home invader will sometimes target the resident as well as the dwelling. The selection process may include a woman living alone, a wealthy senior citizen or a known drug dealer, for example. It is not unheard of for a robber to follow you home based on the value of the car you are driving or the jewelry you are wearing. Some home invaders might have been in your home before as a delivery person, installer or repair vendor. Home robbers rarely work alone and rely on an overwhelming physical confrontation to gain initial control and instill fear in you. The greatest violence usually occurs during the initial sixty seconds of the confrontation and home invaders often come prepared with handcuffs, rope, duct tape, and firearms. Some in-home robbers appear to enjoy the intimidation, domination, and violence and some even claim it’s a "rush."

Cocaine now sells for as little as 60 euros

Cocaine now sells for as little as 60 euros ($80) a gram, or 5 euros ($7) a line, and it is regularly used by 1.6 percent of Spaniards, up from 0.9 percent in 1999, a government report said this month.Traces of cocaine can be found on 94 percent of banknotes in Spain, a country that has one of the world's highest rates of users, according to a study published on Sunday.

a quarter of males younger than 49 in Spain have paid for sex

the state-run National Statistics Institute show a quarter of males younger than 49 in Spain have paid for sex) is satisfied by a population of sex workers who are over 95 per cent extranjeras (of foreign nationality). These women, who are ‘owned’ by mafias here, are trafficked from all over the world - most commonly from Russia, Romania, Nigeria, Brazil and Colombia, with Romanian trafficking mafias becoming especially prolific. Spain is also a transit stop for victims en route to France, Germany and Portugal.
In 2005, a huge police operation in Andalucía and Extremadura discovered 54 Brazilian women who had been trafficked on false pretences and forced into prostitution on arrival. In this case, 11 Spaniards and three Brazilians were arrested and accused of trafficking.

147 women for being in the country illegally

The police have arrested 147 women for being in the country illegally since January of 2004. Not all of them have since been deported: article 59 of the Foreigners’ Law states that they can remain in Spain and obtain work papers if they co-operate with the police in tracking down the people who brought them into the country and employed them illegally in the first place. gang arranged for the procurement of women in Romania, their transport into Spain and their sale to pimps who paid 800 to 1,000 euros per woman plus a monthly rent for the right to prostitute the woman on the gang's 'turf'. The women worked 10-hour days and in some cases were also required to sell drugs to their clients, in order to increase the gang's revenues, say police. The operation is still open and further arrests could be made.

brothels on the Costa del Sol

Following an investigation of brothels on the Costa del Sol over the past eighteen months, the National Police have arrested 150 people in Malaga province accused of sexual exploitation and other crimes relating to prostitution.

all residents of Malaga

Police seized 4.3 tons (4.7 US tons) of hashish in southern Portugal, and arrested four Moroccans on suspicion of drug smuggling, authorities said Friday.
Police intercepted the suspects Tuesday, in truck heading to Spain.
A search revealed 52 bales of hashish in the truck, police said in a statement. Another 88 bales were found at a remote warehouse, it said.
The suspects, all residents of Malaga, southern Spain, were in custody, the statement said.
Police said the drugs had an estimated street value of around ¤20 million (US$29 million).

cannabis intended for the European market

Some four tonnes of cannabis intended for the European market were seized by the Moroccan Royal Navy off the coast of Nador (northeast), local authorities affirmed here Monday.
The drug was concealed in a zodiac whose occupants succeeded in fleeing, the same source said, adding that security forces has already launched an international arrest warrant against traffickers.

member of the Civil Guard has been arrested in Melilla

A member of the Civil Guard has been arrested in Melilla as he was trying to board the Málaga ferry with 56 kilos of cannabis hidden in his car.
The arrest took place on Sunday night, and was carried out by his colleagues assigned to the Civil Guard in Melilla.
It happened during a routine control of vehicles waiting to board the ferry, when sniffer dogs detected the drug hidden inside the wheels of the officer’s four wheel drive vehicle.
The drugs have an estimated street value of 81,000 €.

Portugal Connection

Police said Monday they had seized 3.3 tons (3.6 U.S. tons) of hashish in Portugal, and arrested a 21-year-old Moroccan man in connection with the seizure.
Police made the arrest , after chasing a van that refused to stop in southern Portugal.
"During the chase the driver tried to hit police cars several times," leading police to fire on the van's tires to stop the vehicle, police said in a statement.
The suspect then tried to flee on foot, running 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) until captured, the statement said.
Police said the man had been headed to Spain, and had tracked the suspect and van down after investigating recent shipments of illegal drugs offloaded along the Portuguese coast.

ocean rescue boat off the Spanish coast

Spanish police on Sunday said they had seized more than four tonnes of hashish on an ocean rescue boat off the Spanish coast and arrested 15 people in the latest of a series of raids on drug trafficking rings.
In a statement police said ‘4.3 tonnes of hashish have been seized in the cabins of a small boat used for ocean rescue operations.’
The 15 people arrested were Spanish, Colombian, Romanian and Moroccan nationals, police said.
Three of them were crew members, one was the suspected head of a drug trafficking ring, and eight were suspected of trying to smuggle the drugs onto the Spanish coast
A total of 13,000 euros (18,000 dollars), two kilos (4.4 pounds) of cocaine, five inflatable boats and 15 mobile phones were also seized in the police raid, according to the statement.
Spain is Europe’s main point of entry for Moroccan cannabis and for cocaine from South America.

operation "Coleta" (Ponytail) in Malaga

Spanish police arrested 17 people and seized four tons of hashish smuggled from Morocco in separate anti-narcotics operations on the island of Ibiza and in Malaga
In both cases, smugglers brought the drugs to the Spanish coasts by boat and, after hiding them away for a period of time, distributed them to other parts of Europe, the General Directorate of the Police and Civil Guard said.
operation "Coleta" (Ponytail) in Malaga, authorities netted six suspects and seized 892 kilos of hashish. The arrests were made when the drugs were about to be unloaded in an area near the sports harbor of El Candado.
According to authorities, the suspects in Malaga used sophisticated communications equipment and dark clothing to better camouflage themselves and avoid detection by police.
The organization had all the necessary infrastructure for transporting the drugs: people in Morocco to load the hashish onto the boats, drivers for the vessels, individuals to receive them at the destination points and other members of the network charged with storing and guarding the drugs.
The operation remains ongoing and therefore more arrests could be made.

Moroccan-born Dutch Amin Mrini,

Moroccan-born Dutch Amin Mrini, who was sentenced to the death penalty at the first instance court for the murder of a Dutch citizen, Ilona Nemeth, in August 2005 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The postponement came to appoint a new chief judge to give a ruling on this case. The defendant, who was sued for a list of charges, notably murder, rape and theft, was arrested in 2006 following a Dutch police arrest warrant.
The defendant, who committed the murder during his conditional release, was serving a four-year sentence for having raped a young lady.

Cabo de Gata Nature Park

Two arrests were made as the smugglers were unloading Close to three tons of cannabis resin at San José port in the Cabo de Gata Nature Park.
Two drug smugglers were caught in the act in the early hours of Sunday.
They are 51 year old Nicolás S.M., who is from Almería and has been arrested on three previous occasions for robbery, and a Moroccan national named as Idriss B.
Ideal newspaper reports that one of the two vans seized in the Civil Guard operation turned out to be stolen from Ribarroja de Turia, in Valencia, last month.
Another two suspects managed to escape custody.

a street value of 3.7 million

A joint operation between National Police and Customs Authorities on Friday night has seized 2.5 tons of cannabis resin on a beach in Las Amoladeras, in La Manga.
Police say in a press release that ten people were arrested after a Customs helicopter spotted a suspicious-looking boat approaching the coast.
Authorities were waiting on shore, and the arrests were made at 4am: five Spaniards and five Moroccan nationals.
The drugs haul would have brought a street value of 3.7 million €.

British man is in custody after a high speed sea chase

Officers seized 109 kilos of cannabis resin carried by two jetskis when the drugs were dumped on a beach in Marbella
A British man is in custody after a high speed sea chase to the coast of Marbella on Sunday.
The Civil Guard say in a press release that the Coastguard chased two jetskis to the Río Verde Beach, and that two suspects ran off on foot after dumping their cargo of 109 kilos of cannabis on the shore.
A 35 year old Briton resident in Estepona, named as E.W. in reports, was arrested after a search by Civil Guard patrols from Estepona and Ojén.

700 million smuggled-in packs of tobacco

700 million smuggled-in packs of tobacco are sold in Spain. This merchandise comes primarily from the East through different land and sea routes, from the United States and from Andorra. It makes up ten per cent of the tobacco consumed annually in Spain, which implies a loss of 120 millions US dollars for the Spanish tobacco industry. Contraband tobacco can be found throughout Spain and is smuggled in primarily through Andalusia, Galicia and Catalonia. This tobacco traffic is controlled by large mafias dedicated to contraband goods, even of European size.

The Maltese connection

Malta is serving as a redistribution centre for drugs from South America.
Malta’s drug barons are behind bars at Kordin, cocaine worth 46 million marks destined for the Spanish market was being discovered in a container destined for the Malta Freeport.
The find included 514 kilogrammes of 90% pure cocaine and 25,000 ecstasy pills – representing a local market value of over Lm 20 million
The plan, according to German investigators, was to use yachts from Malta to ship the drugs to the Spanish mainland.
The federal criminal investigators in Germany were somehow tipped off that cocaine from Venezuela was being transhipped to Malta via Hamburg. There were 2,500 containers on the container ship Nedlloyd Kingston, The search carried out by the German and Italian police discovered 64 packages of the drug buried beneath 1,152 packs of work gloves at the rear of the container. The packages were hidden behind carbon paper, a practice that aims to render x-ray machines useless.
In a sting operation, investigators had removed the drugs and allowed the container to depart for Malta in order to apprehend those related to the case.

Michael Dugdale, 60,

Michael Dugdale, 60, was arrested two months ago at his house in the south- east of Spain, following a Europe-wide manhunt.
He is accused of six rapes and a string of sex assaults on children as young as 12.
He was extradited to Britain - but was allowed to return to his villa after Judge Robert Brown gave him bail earlier this month at a chambers hearing, from which the public were excluded.

Francisco Corbacho

The mayor of Gaucín, Francisco Corbacho, has been fined 2,700 euros and banned from holding public office for seven years after a court found him guilty of embezzlement of public funds and corruption. The judge heard how between December 2002 and January 2003 Corbacho took advantage of the absence of the municipal secretary to obtain Town Hall cheques for sums ranging between 10,000 and 22,000 euros, amounting to a total of 200,000 euros. The discrepancy in the accounts was reported by the secretary at the end of January and the then mayor later paid back the money in question.

several arrests on the Gibraltar border

The Spanish National Police made several arrests on the Gibraltar border. One of these was a 37 year old Portuguese citizen, L.F.D.O., who was wanted by a court in Estella. Another, 44 year old J. L.C., was wanted by an Algeciras court, as was a 39 year old Gibraltarian, E.J.S. These arrests were a result of the passport controls carried out by police at the border.

Richard Neil has become the 6th fatality

Richard Neil has become the 6th fatality to die as a consequence of the settling of scores in Málaga province this year. The first of them was last August at The Point bar, when a 38 year old Estonian was shot dead with a single shot to the head.
Two weeks later the burnt out body of a man was found in a car in Estepona. He had also been shot. And on September 11th three Colombians were killed in the Torreblanca del Sol Urbanisation in Fuengirola, in the settling of scores over cocaine trafficking.

living in the Fuengerola area of Spain

Northumbria Police is continuing to make enquiries to trace Allan James Foster, 31, who sometimes goes under other names including Sean Wilkinson. He originates from South Shields but has also spent time in Majorca and the Canaries.

It is believed he may currently be living in the Fuengerola area of Spain. Foster is 5'8" tall and has a mole on the left side of his face. He is wanted in connection with the murder of David "Noddy" Rice, 42, who was shot several times as he sat in his car in a car park in South Tyneside around 4pm on May 24 last year.
A father of seven, David Rice was lured by his evil killers down to the car park on the pretext of a meeting about money owed over a drugs debt. He was shot several times by two masked men at close range and died a short time later in hospital.
The area where he was shot is popular with visitors, many of whom witnessed the horrifying events of that day. Straight after the killing a Ford Mondeo was driven to a nearby lane where it was burnt out. The killers were then driven away from South Shields in a Ford Transit van. One man has already been convicted and jailed for Mr Rice's murder and a number of others convicted for their role in the attack.
Foster is featured on the Spanish Crimestoppers website and police are urging anyone who sees him or knows of his whereabouts to get in touch.

A British man has died overnight after being shot in the centre of Marbella

A British man has died overnight after being shot in the centre of Marbella by two people who managed to make their escape from the scene.
EFE news agency quotes police sources who say it happened at 10pm close to Calle Camilo José Cela and that the two people who carried out the attack passed on a moped.
The victim is reported to have been shot several times in the back.
The National Police have opened a full investigation.

840 kilos of cannabis resin in Estepona

The Civil Guard have reported a drugs haul of 840 kilos of cannabis resin in Estepona this weekend, after a suspicious boat was spotted 10 miles off shore on Saturday, and came to shore on the Playa Arroyo Vaquero. The drugs had already been loaded into a waiting vehicle when officers arrived on the beach and arrested a 28 year old man named by his initials, I.C.M. The Civil Guard said he is Spanish.

A Dutch national offered an officer 50 €

A Dutch national offered an officer 50 € to let him through without problems
A Dutch national whose van was searched at the Customs point in Tarifa on Tuesday is under arrest for trying to bribe a Civil Guard. He was due to appear before Instruction Court No. 4 in Algeciras.
Europa Press said he offered the officer 50 € to let him through without any problems, and now faces charges of bribery. There was no mention if anything untoward was found in the van.

British pensioner resident in Fuengirola

British pensioner resident in Fuengirola has been taken into custody as the alleged head of the gang. He is named as A.M.T., aged 66.
The Interior Ministry said in a press release that the investigation began in Barcelona in October with the discovery of 1.2 tons of cannabis resin hidden inside computer casings. It led investigating officers to premises in Montcada i Reixac, Barcelona province, last month, where they saw a lorry being loaded up with what appeared to be industrial machinery, and also saw the suspect on site.