Two Civil Guards arrest a member of the El Rifeño clan in Almería province.Guardia Civil (Civil Guard)
Last summer, a number of drug dealers working for the Guardia Civil in Almería were shot. It was Thursday, June 9th, near the hermitage of Torre García, dedicated to the Virgen del Mar. The agents had launched an investigation two years earlier and had a well-guarded cache that was supposed to be made that day, but they didn’t find out. They expected them to open fire on them because this had never happened to them before. “They are always armed, but they have never used them against us,” sources in the case say. The shooting ended with the arrest of 11 people and was the first phase of an operation that led to the arrest of another 20 people at the end of last year and enabled the dissolution of one of the strongest and most dangerous organizations based in Almería, which used assault submachine guns, Molotov cocktails and explosives confiscated, as well as three tons of hashish. Most of its members are already in prison. Among them their leader, known as El Rifeño due to his family origins from the Rif Mountains (Morocco), although he is Spanish.
These shots were no accident. They were the organization’s answer to a problem it had two months earlier. Then, after setting up a hideout on the Almería coast, they were attacked by another group of drug dealers. They were shot at and even rammed one of their powerful BMWs to force it off the road. It was laden with hashish, a commodity that had been taken from them. The Civil Guard found the vehicle the next day in a ditch with two bullet holes, two pistols in it, and no rear seats to house the drugs. It’s not known who carried out this robbery – as robberies between drug dealers are called – but it prompted the gang to take security measures and even to their usual hideout on El Palmer beach, a narrow strip of rocky coast that belonged to them change municipality of Énix, east of the capital Almeria.
In Énix they have been smuggling hashish since at least July 2020. It was then that the Civil Guard first discovered the activities of the organization and signified the beginning of an investigation that has been going on for more than three years, a period that served to identify its members and learn about their working methods. They learned that they were always armed and that their procedure was more or less the same: using high-speed boats, disembarking on the same beach and then transferring the goods in high-performance vehicles – from Mercedes E-class 60 to … BMWs with engines from 300 Horses – to a building in the area that was used as a nursery. Over time, the agents followed the group’s activities, both unloading medicines and other more logistically oriented operations, such as transporting gasoline for the boats. They also thwarted some landing operations, as their presence forced the drug traffickers to turn back with their cargo, even though they were about to land.
The information that the caches were always carried out in the same area was not only available to the Guardia Civil. Another group of drug dealers had it too. It was they who, at the beginning of 2022, waited for hundreds of kilos of hash to land, load them into high-end vehicles, and plunder their rivals during their transport, shooting and hitting their vehicles. In order to prevent future thefts, the organization then decided to make some changes. The first was to change location. Two months later, as the boat approached the usual point and was about to land, it made a tack at the last moment. In this way, they tried to mislead anyone who observed them. It was when they went to the Hermitage of Torregarcía. The second was to hire security reinforcements.
Shootout next to the hermitage
In fact, these troops had set up a device to control the new hideout area, which was normally very quiet. They had spiked chains at the entrances to stop police vehicles should they arrive, and even posed as Civil Guard officers to stop an approaching car. They were three people from Almeria who had gone into sports and whose mobile phones and car keys were confiscated by the criminals. Then numerous Armed Institute patrols arrived, who were met with gunfire. Officers responded – no one was injured – and after the shooting and ensuing commotion, they managed to arrest 11 people. Some members of the organization managed to escape the area and went straight to a building where they used to store the drugs, which investigators had already found. After entering and searching the site, several high-performance vehicles, military tactical material and a target with bullet holes, partly from submachine guns, were found: the site not only served as a warehouse, but was also used for training personnel.
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Months later, the operation called “Palma” and carried out by the Almería Civil Guard’s Organized Crime and Drugs (EDOA) Team ended last November, although it was announced today. Then they carried out new searches and arrested another 20 people, mostly Moroccan nationals, residing in the province of Almería, except for one person in Melilla and another in Barcelona, cities they went to after the first arrests had fled . Several Spaniards, mostly involved in logistics, also fell, and one of them was willing to sell two kilos of explosives to one criminal group or another.
Of the 32 people arrested, 19 are already in prison. Among those arrested is the leader of the gang, El Rifeño, who arrests two others. One for being involved in a drug deal and another for having ties to another drug trafficking organization. He led a quiet and unfussy life in the La Urban neighborhood, in Roquetas de Mar, a neighborhood of houses and swimming pools where his lieutenants also lived. The rest of the gang members lived in apartments paid for by drug dealers in the area. “They went unnoticed and didn’t flaunt their wealth, but they lived very well,” sources of the study say. In addition to their houses, eight workshops and industrial buildings have also been registered in the cities of Huércal de Almería, Vícar and the capital Almería.
Between the interventions and the police searches, 3,055 kilos of hashish, 30 vehicles – including a dozen high-value vehicles – and various weapons were seized: a submachine gun and six pistols, as well as bulletproof vests and military tactical material. Also analyzed were, among other things, deployable spike systems to neutralize vehicles, Molotov cocktails, eleven ammonite explosive shells and three drug boats, as well as other effects and computer material. The operation remains open unless some peripheral areas are closed, such as the arrest of some members of the group who are still in search and capture. The judicial process is in the hands of the Investigative Courts 2 and 3 of Almería and is promoted by the Anti-Drugs Prosecutor Almería.
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