This is how the narcos from Salvamento Marítimo take advantage of getting an escort for their hashish shipments

• Rescue The SOS of drug traffickers in the Strait of Gibraltar

Invented breakdowns, accidents that never happened and orca attacks that never came close.

Depending on the day, the SOS they launched was different, but the objective was the same: to deceive Salvamento Marítimo into obtaining their

and their escort to the port, where they could peacefully disembark the

they had collected on the coast of Morocco.

This is how a network of drug traffickers based in the province of Cadiz worked and which has just been dismantled thanks to Operation Camarote, carried out jointly by the Civil Guard, the National Police Corps and the Tax Agency's Customs Surveillance Service.

Two of its members have been arrested.

The organization, which was mainly dedicated to the introduction of hashish from North Africa and whose leader operated from Lisbon, regularly used sailboats with which it tried to disguise

the comings and goings between the Cadiz and Moroccan coasts with the bales

trips. drug inside.

To ensure that their route was not altered or their boats intercepted by the security forces, the members of this drug gang gave notice to Salvamento Marítimo with the excuse of invented

or incidents.

In this way, they ensured that they had the escort of the rescue ships that responded to their calls for help, to the point that they were towed to the port of destination.

Once there, they calmly unloaded the bundles of hashish, which were stored in a storage room that the organization had in the town of El Puerto de Santa María, as a

.

The stash intervened in a storage room in El Puerto de Santa María used as a 'nursery'. THE WORLD

In the operation that has allowed the dismantling of the gang, in fact, 172 kilos of hashish were intervened that had been introduced in the narco-sailor hidden in the cabins and that were found in the storage room.

There the investigators found

brick-shaped packages, along with 63,000 euros in cash hidden in a safe, as well as mobile phones, a vehicle and a laptop.

Likewise, various documentation was seized that shows that the activity of this gang and this particular way of proceeding dated back to at least 2016 and was part of a plan specifically designed to introduce narcotics into Europe by means of sailboats.

The investigation began in the summer of 2021, when the agents detected a sailboat-type vessel and several individuals who were carrying out

linked to drug trafficking.

In June of that year, the main investigated and owner of the ship docked at the Barbate marina after having suffered an alleged killer whale attack while crossing the Strait of Gibraltar.

The incident caused them to change boats, but they were unable to take the focus away from the authorities.

As a result of these investigations, it was learned that the owner of the ship made frequent

, for which the collaboration of the Portuguese Judicial Police was requested, which allowed detecting a meeting between him and the Portuguese citizen who turned out to be the ringleader and financier of the entire plot and who was known to the Portuguese authorities and had numerous records for drug trafficking and illegal possession of weapons.

The intervention was carried out after learning that the gang was going to move a large amount of hashish from the nursery storage room to Portugal, which was aborted with the operation and the arrest of the two suspects.

Drug bailouts on the rise

Sources from the fight against drug trafficking told this newspaper that this gang's strategy is not usual, although it is relatively frequent for Maritime Salvage to come

of boats used by traffickers affected by breakdowns, these yes, real ones.

In fact, as published by EL MUNDO, during the month of December these rescues multiplied and a good part of the departures of the rescue teams of the public company - dependent on the Ministry of Transport - were motivated by the SOS of the drug traffickers.

Maritime Rescue sources pointed out that since the beginning of

and until the end of 2021, the exits of this type in which they had directly participated reached six, when the usual thing is that, at most, they are half, two or three.

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Know more

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• drug trafficking

• Civil Guard

• National Police

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