The road that runs parallel to the Cádiz bank of the Guadalquivir is a feast of drug trafficking signs for those who know how to look. This past Sunday, a multitude of tread marks in the mud, some dry, others fresh, rested under the feet of a group of kids who were spending time stationed in their cars, looking at the horizon. They are traces in daylight of the intense activity that takes place at night. And in the early hours of this Wednesday the transfer of hashish has been much more than a suspicion: the Civil Guard has managed to abort a stash during an operation in which the drug traffickers received the agents with bursts of automatic weapons of war.
The events have resulted in nine alleged traffickers arrested and some 2,500 kilos of hashish seized, as detailed by the Cádiz Command in a statement. The dangerous collision occurred at 3:20, when the civil guards who were monitoring the SIVE – the surveillance camera and sensor service that monitors the Strait and its surroundings – detected a boat that was sailing suspiciously in the area of the mouth of the Guadalquivir. .
The agents of the armed institute, supported by national police from the Sanlúcar Police Station, located the exact place where the stash was taking place on land: the drug traffickers had four all-terrain vehicles deployed and were introducing the drugs into them at full speed. When they were discovered, they ran away, while opening fire on the agents, who were “received with numerous shots from automatic weapons of war from various directions,” according to the note. The civil guards responded to the blast “using their regulatory weapons.” Despite the scuffle, there were no injuries or damage.
The action resulted in the seizure of the four off-road vehicles and 77 bales of hashish with a total weight of about 2,500 kilos. The agents managed to arrest nine suspects, although the boat and others involved managed to flee the scene, whose exact location the Civil Guard has not specified. The Cádiz Command maintains the investigation open.
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The police siege on the Strait of Gibraltar since the summer of 2018 has caused a drug diaspora to different areas of the Andalusian coast in these almost six years. This has made hot spots like the Guadalquivir once again take center stage in drug trafficking. The river, navigable to Seville and full of marshes and nooks, represents a challenge for the State security forces and bodies. In fact, the Civil Guard associations have been denouncing for months that the current work shifts of their maritime service—has gone from 24 hours to 12—and the lack of resources often makes it difficult to control the coast and the river.
The control of the area closest to the Strait has also caused other changes in the modus operandi of the drug trafficker, who is now able to endure for days embarked on a drug boat, waiting to find the right moment to unload the drugs. He has also caused traffickers to become more armed and resort much more frequently to violence, both in response to the agents and out of fear that other organizations will steal their drugs, known as overturns. And in that armor they have shown preferences for war arsenals, according to police sources.
The Andalusian Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office has been warning for years about this gradual increase in drug trafficking violence. “The illicit possession of weapons in drug custody places is very worrying, but during 2022 it has been possible to verify the growth in the power of weapons,” stated the public ministry in the 2022 report, published last month October. Just in August of that year, the Police discovered an unprecedented arsenal in the basement of a house in Chipiona (Cádiz). He recovered an AK-47, a Zastava rifle, a Skorpion submachine gun (capable of firing 850 shots per minute), pistols, revolvers, double-barreled shotguns… “All in perfect working order,” the agents then noted.
In the case of this morning, the agents do not know for now the details of the arsenal that the drug traffickers could possess. They know that they were automatic weapons of war because of the ammunition and shell casings recovered, but they have not yet managed to obtain the weapons. The event adds to a long list of indications and evidence that show that the drug traffickers of the Strait are still willing to do whatever is necessary to successfully carry out their drug shipments from Morocco.
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