On June 1, five hooded men approached a Belgian citizen in the street of San Pedro Alcántara, in Marbella (Malaga) as he was about to get into his car. Armed to the teeth, the men forcibly took him away and transferred him 30 kilometers away to the municipality of Coín, where they locked him up in a country house. In the building, the man suffered five days of a stormy kidnapping. His captors did not let him sleep for a minute, repeatedly beat and threatened him and even tried to make him suffer from hypothermia by placing ice packs around his body and directing a fan towards him. Three months later, the National Police have arrested those responsible, between 19 and 51 years old, four of French nationality and eight Spanish. They were part of a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking based between Malaga and Ceuta. Four of them are already in prison.
The reason for the kidnapping is related to the theft of a drug shipment valued at 1.5 million euros from one of the members of the criminal gang, according to the National Police in a statement. This is the figure that the captors asked the victim’s relatives for their release, who reported the facts to the police. The agents managed to get the criminal organization to release the victim five days after being captured, after suffering the attacks and forced insomnia and while demanding the payment of one and a half million euros.
Investigators from the Costa del Sol Drug and Organized Crime Unit (Udyco) found out that those responsible for the kidnapping were members of a criminal group implanted on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. Its members have numerous records of violent crimes, drug trafficking and illegal possession of weapons, and reside mainly in Marbella, Coín and Ceuta.
Finally, on September 15, the National Police deployed a device with more than 70 policemen, who acted in parallel in these three towns. As a result, 12 members of the criminal organization were arrested, including its leader, a businessman. They are accused of the alleged crimes of kidnapping, robbery with violence or intimidation, against moral integrity and belonging to a criminal organization.
Four of those arrested are already in prison by order of the Court of Instruction number 1 of Marbella. The gang, according to the National Police, was dedicated to international drug trafficking and had among its ranks very violent individuals who, in addition, had numerous technological resources. Many of them were found in the seven searches made during the operation, such as geolocation devices, frequency jammers, various drones and spy cameras. Computer equipment, a key duplicating machine, lock picks, tools, ski masks, binoculars, luxury watches, three vehicles and cash were also found in the homes of those arrested.