Guardia Civil seize weapons destined for Southern Spain’s drug gangs

GUARDIA CIVIL seized 160 firearms destined to be used by drug trafficking gangs in Southern Spain and arrested three people, two of them German and one British.

In an operation codenamed Nongreta, the Guardia Civil dismantled an operation in Malaga which supplied weapons to drug trafficking organisations on the Costa del Sol and in the Campo de Gibraltar area. Among the 160 firearms seized, there are 30 assault rifles and submachine guns, in addition to almost 10,000 cartridges, 270 magazines, silencers and even a military explosive grenade.

The detainees, two Germans and a British citizen, have been charged with belonging to a criminal organisation, trafficking and storing weapons and ammunition, drug trafficking and document falsification.

One of the detainees was wanted by the German authorities for similar acts, another was linked to neo-Nazi movements, and the third made use of numerous false identities and passports.

They had been operating for more than three years; acquiring weapons of war – assault rifles and submachine guns – in Eastern countries, then altering them in a workshop that one of the detainees had installed in his home.

Another of the detainees was then in charge of selling them and they were used in drug theft and score settling between drugs traffickers in the area.

Guardia Civil focused their attention on a German man who had been living in Coin, Malaga for years, pretending to be a simple pensioner. The German Criminal Police (BKA) revealed that he was wanted for questioning regarding an arsenal of weapons found in Hannover, a crime for which his partner was already serving time.

In a search of his home the Guardia Civil found the sophisticated illegal workshop and discovered that it was illegally connected to the electric supply to support the amount of power required.

The second detainee was responsible for the storage and concealment of the weapons. Packed in airtight bags, they were stored ready for distribution in a warehouse that this German citizen had rented.

Linked to extreme right-wing collectives and Nazi movements, the detainee had a ‘museum’ of Nazi-themed objects, uniforms and flags in his home.

The British detainee was the middle-man between the Germans who altered the weapons seized by the Guardia Civil and the drug gangs in Southern Spain that they were destined for.

He had prior arrests for drug-trafficking and hid the weapons in false bottoms of high-end vehicles when transporting them. He used false documents when travelling.

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