The road that runs parallel to the Cadiz side of the Guadalquivir River is a feast of clues for those who know how to look for them. This past Sunday, many tire marks in the mud, some dry, others fresh, lay under the feet of a group of boys who were passing the time sitting in their cars, looking at the horizon. These are traces in broad daylight of the intense activity that takes place at night. And in the early hours of this Wednesday, the trafficking of hashish was much more than a suspicion: the Civil Guard managed to thwart a drug shipment during an operation in which the drug traffickers welcomed the agents with bursts of automatic war weapons. The events led to the arrest of nine alleged traffickers and the seizure of about 2,500 kilograms of hashish.
The dangerous confrontation occurred at 3:20 a.m. when the Civil Guard officers who were watching the SIVE – the surveillance cameras and sensors service that monitors the Strait and its surroundings – detected a boat sailing suspiciously in the area of the mouth of the Guadalquivir. The officers, supported by national police officers from the Sanlúcar Police Station, located the exact location where the drug was being unloaded on land: the traffickers had four off-road vehicles deployed and were rapidly loading the drugs into them. When they realized they had been discovered, they ran away while firing at the agents who were “received with numerous shots of automatic war weapons from several directions,” according to the statement. The Civil Guard officers responded to the gunfire “using their standard issue weapons.” Despite the confrontation, there were no injuries or damage.
The Civil Guard in Cadiz suspects that the gunfire came from war weapons such as M16, AR15, or G36 rifles. However, so far they have only been able to seize the ammunition and shells. The operation resulted in the seizure of the four off-road vehicles and 77 bales of hashish weighing a total of about 2,500 kilograms. The agents managed to arrest nine suspects, although the boat and other individuals involved managed to flee the scene, the exact location of which the Civil Guard has not specified. The Cadiz Command maintains the investigation open.
The police surveillance around the Strait of Gibraltar since the summer of 2018 has caused a diaspore of drug traffickers to different areas of the Andalusian coast, leading to a resurgence of places like the Guadalquivir in drug trafficking. The navigable river up to Seville, full of marshes and nooks, poses a challenge for the security forces. The associations of the Civil Guard have been denouncing for months that the current shifts of their maritime service workforce – which has been reduced from 24 hours to 12 – and the lack of resources often hinder the control of the coast and the river. The immediate area control of the Strait has also caused changes in the modus operandi of drug traffickers, who can now spend days on board a narco boat waiting for the right moment to unload the drugs. This has also led traffickers to arm themselves more and resort much more frequently to violence, both in response to agents and out of fear that other organizations will steal the drugs, known as “vuelcos.”
The Andalusian Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office has been warning for years about the increasing violence in drug trafficking. The illegal possession of weapons in drug custody locations is very concerning, but during 2022, there has been an increase in the power of weapons, as stated in the 2022 report published last October. In August of that year, the Police discovered a previously unseen arsenal in a residence in Chipiona (Cadiz). They recovered an AK-47, a Zastava rifle, a Skorpion submachine gun (capable of firing 850 rounds per minute), pistols, revolvers, double-barreled shotguns… “All in perfect working order,” the agents pointed out at the time. Subscribe to continue reading.
