Drugs flood into Spain

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 15

Drugs flood into Spain

By

FRANCES KERRY

of Reuters in Madrid

The arrest lately of two groups of people suspected of involvement in large smuggling rackets and the seizing of 17 tonnes of hashish has highlighted Spain’s position as an important drugs transit point in Europe. “We’re in the eye of a storm of international drug trafficking,” the “Diario 16” newspaper said in an editorial. “News about drugs is hitting the front pages with alarming frequency.” Police detained three Britons on the Mediterranean island of Majorca after an extradition request by the United States. The three, suspected of

involvement in one of the world’s biggest hashish smuggling rings are being held under tight security, said the Palma prison director, Joaquin Mejuto. On the same day, police seized 17 tonnes of hashish hidden on the coast near Barcelona and arrested two Frenchmen and four Spaniards suspected of organising a smuggling link from Lebanon and Morocco to the rest of Europe. Spain was an obvious transit point for hashish, as the European country nearest to North Africa where much of the drug originated, while cocaine smugglers from South America enjoyed good air links and a common language, said Santiago de Torres, a senior official at the National Anti-Drug

Plan. The large number of foreigners living and taking holidays in southern Spain also made it easy for smugglers. ‘lt is very difficult to check every pleasure boat coming into somewhere like Puerto Banus (near Malaga),” de Torres told Reuters. The Anti-Drug Plan’s figures show a large increase in drug seizings in Spain recently. Police Seized 59,000 kg of hashish in 1987 compared with 11,000 kg in 1980, 1134 kg of cocaine compared with 58kg and 413 kg of heroin compared with six kg. Detentions for drug-re-lated offences rose to 25,000 in 1987 compared with 19,000 the previous year.

De Torres said the rises reflected an increase both in police efficiency and in trafficking, with cocaine producers now favouring Western Europe over the United States as a market. Police successes had been helped by greater resources and improved co-operation with other parts of Eurpe and the United States, which had a permanent staff of Drug Enforcement Agency (D.E.A.) officials at its Madrid Embassy. The Palma arrests, made in co-operation between the D.E.A. and London’s Scotland Yard, reflected “far closer relations on the drug problem,” de Torres said.

“With 1992 and the opening up of European Community borders, there is also a very strong will

among members to make it more difficult to smuggle into the Community in the first place,” he said. De Torres said Spain was also making it more difficult for smugglers to launder money through concerns such as hotels and real estate. A law passed three months ago allows courts to confiscate a convicted smuggler’s possessions if unable to prove they were earned legitimately. De Torres said domestic consumption of drugs was high but no worse than in other European" countries. The worst problem concerns the country’s estimated 60,000 addicts of heroin, which is not one of the drugs most commonly smuggled through Spain.