Sentences of 44 years in prison for eleven accused of drug trafficking in the Marina Alta

The Court acquits six other defendants, including two alleged ringleaders of the network who were also charged with the kidnapping of a drug trafficker.

Sentences of 44 years to eleven accused of drug trafficking in the Marina Alta. / ALEX DOMÍNGUEZ P. Closed

20 DEC 2024 17:11 Updated 22 DEC 2024 11:53

The Provincial Court of Alicante has sentenced eleven people to sentences of between three years and three months and four years and five months in prison accused of being part of an organisation dedicated to the introduction of drugs into Spain that was transferred from Malaga to municipalities in the Marina Alta, where they trafficked it and also sent it later to France. The Second Section has imposed sentences totalling 44 years in prison and a fine of 600,000 euros for the value of just over 350 kilos of hashish seized in the operation, according to the sentence notified to the parties and which can be appealed before the High Court of Justice.

Six other defendants in the same case, tried last May after eight suspensions, have been acquitted of the crimes of drug trafficking and organization that the Prosecutor’s Office charged them with as they did not consider their participation in the events accredited. Among these exonerated are two defendants – defended by lawyers Alicia Grau Córdoba, Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella and Roberto Sánchez Martínez – whom the Civil Guard considered to be leaders of the organization and also responsible for the kidnapping of a member of the gang on trial.

The Prosecutor’s Office withdrew the accusation of illegal detention in the trial due to lack of evidence, including the absence of the victim – whose whereabouts are unknown – whom the organization kidnapped when it believed that she had appropriated 351 kilos of hashish that she transferred from the province of Malaga to the Marina Alta, when in fact it was seized after being discovered by the Local Police of Benissa after the call of a person who saw irregular movements in a van parked in the industrial estate of La Pedrera.

Drug trafficking enzymesion

According to the facts proven in the sentence, the eleven convicted were configured throughout 2020, in the midst of the pandemic of theCOVID, a criminal network whose purpose was tointroduction into Spain of “high quantities” of hashishfor their subsequent transfer from Malaga to the Marina Alta region, where they carried out “the distribution, storage and illicit trafficking and even the supply to third groups dedicated to this purpose”.

The Civil Guard of El Verger was alerted on April 21, 2020 to a suspicious movement between three vehicles parked at the access to a car park in the industrial estate of that municipality. They were bales of drugs that were being passed from one van to another and after realizing that they had been discovered and were being recorded with a mobile phone, they fled. However, the van carrying the drugs – which had been stolen in Madrid – broke down on an avenue in El Verger and they had to unload the bales and put them in a car that took the cache to Gata de Gorgos.

The next day a meeting took place in Gata de Gorgos after having carried the drug from somewhere in southern Spain to the Marina Alta. The afternoon of April 26 was when the Local Police of Benissa went to the La Pedrera industrial estate for a citizen warning and when they inspected a van that had the rear door open they found

351.3 kilos of hashish divided into twelve bales. The owner of the van where the drugs were and his brother, who was driving it, went to the Civil Guard of Calp to report the disappearance of the vehicle, despite the fact that they knew that it had been intervened, according to the sentence.

After this intervention, the Civil Guard continued with the investigation and carried out arrests and searches on June 1 in Gata de Gorgos, Teulada Moraira, Calp and in the Malaga municipalities of San Pedro de Alcántara and Benahavis.