The Spanish police arrested members of two international drug rings in the North of Spain, confiscating three tonnes of cocaine and 1.2m euros, as well as vehicles and firearms.

Operación Dulce was a combined police operation between the police forces in Galicia and Cádiz and resulted in twelve arrests: two Spaniards, three Dutchmen and seven Brits.

The drugs consignment had been shipped from Colombia in a British vessel before being lighted into fast launches to be transported to the shore and waiting vehicles.

The two Spaniards from Málaga were to transport the load by road to the south. The three Netherlanders were the sellers and the seven Brits, the buyers, headed by drug kingpin, Gary Williams who had previously been arrested on the Costa del Sol.

The Galician police had been investigating the three Netherlanders, who they knew had imported the drug when they discovered that a sale was about to go through with a British-run drug ring on the Costa del Sol.

Allegedly, two of the Dutchmen had flown to Santiago to meet with Williams to organize the sale so the police operation was put into motion. The Dutchmen arrived back in Galicia via Portugal in a taxi and checked in at a small hotel, reportedly leaving a trail of 500-euro notes. In one meeting they were said to have openly spread a large amount of notes over a table in full view of the public. It was this ostentatious behaviour that sealed their fate.

On the 14th of December, an elite police unit, unmarked cars and drug-department police staked out a large van in the Barro industrial estate, which was to transport the first 700 kilos of drugs down to Málaga, hidden under a false floor.

The other Málaga driver was to lead the way in another car. When the police swooped this second driver tried to flee by ramming two police vehicles.

The Director General of the Spanish Policia Nacional, Ignacio Cosidó, explained that few drug rings capable of buying and moving such a large drugs shipments had ever been cracked in Europe and that the shipment was intended for distribution in Europe, but that owing to the recent terrorist attacks in France, the shipment was moved south to await the relaxing of the the French border controls.

(Editorial Comment: My apologies to our readers from the Netherlands for the British-orientated title, but the maximum length for an article title is 60 characters and there was no way of including all of the nationalities involved)

(News: Malaga/Galicia, Spain)