The system was relatively simple, but also effective. Backpacks loaded with up to 14 kilos of cocaine traveled to the Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport in Madrid, in the holds of planes from different cities in South America. They carried check-in tags in the names of fictitious passengers, which ensured that they would never be claimed by anyone. Once at the airfield, employees of a company in charge of managing the luggage located them thanks to the geolocating devices that were attached to the drugs and took them out of the facilities, bypassing security controls. To do this, they used the access they had to restricted areas, which they entered even outside their work shifts, and the vehicles with which they collected luggage on the runways.
The alleged suspects coordinated to do so through an instant messaging application with which they exchanged instructions or alerted each other with flame emoticons of the presence of police checkpoints. The success of the delivery was expressed with a thumbs up symbol. Simple and effective, but far from perfect. In nine months they saw a dozen of these backpacks intercepted by the Civil Guard and the National Police, who finally arrested nine of the alleged members of the plot, including seven airport workers, as reported this Friday by the Ministry of Transportation. Inside.
The one baptized as Operation Laundry began on October 23, 2022 after the Civil Guard intercepted two backpacks that had arrived on a flight from Guayaquil (Ecuador) inside which, respectively, 10.3 and 11.3 kilos of cocaine were found. of great purity. Both packages had false check-in labels and were in transit to other Spanish cities, which ensured that they would not go to the baggage claim carousel. That seizure was followed in the following months by the interception of another 10 backpacks with “significant quantities” (between 10 and 14 kilos each) of narcotics until they totaled 174 kilograms, according to a police report to which EL PAÍS has had access. .
All the caches had important similarities that led to the suspicion that all the shipments had been made by the same organization. In addition to the details of the check-in labels, all of them had traveled on Air Europa company planes that had departed from airports in Guayaquil, Asunción (Paraguay) or Bogotá (Colombia), and the airline handling (airport ground services) that was in charge of managing luggage in Madrid was always the same, Groundforce. As detailed in the police document, all of this pointed to the involvement of a group of employees of the latter company, who supposedly took the backpacks and took them out of the airfield. They were those who, in police jargon, are known as “rescuers.”
The investigations led on July 22 to the arrest of three employees when they tried to leave the airport with two backpacks with a total of 26.8 kilograms of cocaine inside. Shortly after, three other workers and the alleged recipient of the shipments were arrested. The operation later allowed the arrest of the passenger on a flight from Colombia when he was trying to bring 14 kilos of cocaine into Spain. Finally, on December 15, after the analysis of the messages stored on the mobile phone of one of the detainees, a seventh employee allegedly involved was found.
As detailed in the report prepared jointly by the Civil Guard and the National Police, the analysis of the messages exchanged by several members of the plot has revealed their alleged involvement in a good part of the caches seized, but also in others that could not be intercepted by security forces. One of the latter entered the Madrid airport on June 11 and the exchange of messages that accounts for him is indicated in the police document as an example of the “operation of rescue of a luggage or backpack with cocaine” as part of the plot since one of the detainees “is telling what happens at every moment.”
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The conversation reveals how the recovery process lasts more than 10 hours, between 6:44 and 17:09, and in it imbalances in the plot are revealed despite the fact that they had been operating for months. The first message in which they encourage themselves – “may the Lord allow us to succeed” – is followed by others in which they reveal how one “rescues” the backpack and keeps it under their “control” while driving with a vehicle waiting for it. for another member of the plot to arrive to take her out of the airport. “Brother, I am doing reels with this guy [los investigadores concluyen que se refieren a la cocaína] here,” says one of them while complaining that the person who should pick it up hasn't come and has been with the stash for about two hours: “I'm taking a tough shot, brother.”
At that moment, another member of the plot tells him that the drugs cannot yet be removed because there are civil guards at the airport exit for employees, so he tells him to leave the vehicle with the cocaine “parked in the dining room.” He does so shortly after eight in the morning, after hiding the backpack with the narcotic “under the passenger seat.” An hour later, he states that a second member of the network has allegedly already picked her up, but they cannot leave because there are civil guards at the door, whom he represents with flame emoticons. “Is there a doorman?” His interlocutor insists. “Yes, four,” he answers. “Then you have to put up with her a little bit at the base,” is the response.
Finally, shortly before three in the afternoon, nine hours after the arrival of the cache at the airport, the messages indicate that “the girl” [cocaína] He has already left the airport. At 5:09 p.m. they confirm that she has supposedly been handed over to the head of the plot. “Everything positive,” confirms one of them. “My brother, a thousand blessings,” the other responds. Just a month and a half later, the first members of a network that used backpacks and emoticons to smuggle drugs into Spain were arrested.
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#Backpacks #emoticons #cocaine #Barajas #airport