Mohamed MM, from Ceuta, was a soldier in the Army, at least until 2010. At some point he must have decided that there was another more lucrative job and he moved into the underworld of hashish. This Sunday, at around 9:35 p.m., he ended up detained, along with four other people, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, in Cádiz, aboard a drug boat loaded with 64 flasks of gasoline. It was the end of a day in which the drug trafficker shook the river to make it clear that the business is still present in the area: four more drug boats, all empty but ready to be loaded, dodged a Civil Guard patrol boat with impunity and brazenness. as they headed towards the mouth, without the agents on board being able to do anything to stop them.
The drug boat belonging to Mohamed, 44, was discovered by the boat Arlanza River of the Maritime Group of the Strait of the Civil Guard when it was sailing, off Chipiona, just behind a cargo ship to avoid being detected. The discovery sparked a chase in which both boats suffered damage, as confirmed by Civil Guard sources. In fact, one of the boat's occupants ended up hospitalized after breaking his jaw when he hit one of the four outboard motors of the semi-rigid boat. The boat was loaded with 1,280 liters of fuel, stored in flasks that are usually used to refuel drug boats that wait for days on the high seas waiting for the right moment to make their stashes.
The five detainees, all of Spanish nationality, are being investigated for the crime of smuggling – traveling on a boat that, since 2018, has been a prohibited genre – and disobedience. One of them is originally from La Línea de la Concepción and the rest from Ceuta, including Mohamed MM, who, at the time of his arrest, had an identification card that expired in 2010 and accredited him as a member of the Army stationed in Ceuta. . Defense has not responded, to questions from EL PAÍS, if the detainee is still a soldier or has already left the army, alleging that the case is being prosecuted.
It was the umpteenth encounter with hashish workers that the Civil Guard had this Sunday in the Guadalquivir River. The professional association AUGC denounced this Monday with a video how a patrol boat from the Institute came across up to four drug boats, all empty, that were going down the river at high speed. In the piece—recorded by a resident of Sanlúcar de Barrameda at some point that day, as confirmed by AUGC—you can see how the semi-rigid boats avoid the agents' boat, who cannot do anything to prevent their departure. “When there is [viento de] I raised, [los narcos] They put their narco-boats in the river and then they leave. They know that our people cannot stop them because we have no means and because of the danger. Impunity is evident,” denounces one of the agents, who requests anonymity.
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The police reinforcement of the Strait that began in 2018 has modified the way in which drug traffickers transport hashish from Morocco. The pressure has led them to recover areas used in the past, such as the Guadalquivir, to remain on the high seas for days and even to traffic migrants, whom they have no qualms about throwing from boats. In this new way of operating, the figure of the petaquero has proliferated, integrated into small mafias subcontracted by drug traffickers to supply them with gasoline, change crews or take them supplies to the sea.
A legal office
The rise of these new pawns is such that, between 2018 and 2022, the security forces seized 800,000 liters of gasoline destined for drug boats, within the framework of the Special Security Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar. The legality of their task – for now – means that it is not difficult to come across petaqueros who leave from the coast loaded with cans of about 25 liters of gasoline, usually on board smaller boats and which are not illegal, as is the case with the drug boats “For them it is a great business. That is a pack of pipes in which they can load up with flasks and go out to sea,” points out this AUGC agent.
It is even more strange that drug traffickers venture to be seen aboard a drug boat, a prohibited genre valued between 150,000 and 300,000 euros for which they can be arrested and whose loss causes a major setback for their organizations. Hence, the agents fear that drug traffickers are recovering the feeling of impunity that forced the establishment of the police cordon in 2018 and that managed to recover the principle of authority in the Strait and the surrounding area.
Since July 2018 and until August 31 (latest available statistics), police deployment has led to the arrest or investigation of 17,635 suspects of activities related to drug trafficking and smuggling, mostly thanks to the 19,063 operations unleashed by the Security Forces (of which 15,446 are already prosecuted), which have allowed the seizure of 1,387,832 kilograms of hashish, 87,786 of cocaine and 104,018 of marijuana and other substances, according to data provided by the Interior. A good part of these counts were attributed to OCON Sur, the southern anti-drug fight body in the Civil Guard, which was operational from 2018 until September 2022, which became part of the teams of the different commands. Without this centralized command and with a good part of its operations converted into legal cases that do not always end well, the question now is whether the drug traffickers will end up boldly recovering their jurisdiction in the south.
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