Drug traffickers steal three rigid-hulled inflatable boats from Navy during exercises in Barbate
Three military vessels disappeared on Tuesday at Retín beach whilst the Flotex26 exercise was underway. The Civil Guard is investigating the theft.
Three Navy rigid-hulled inflatable boats stolen during military exercises on Cádiz coastline
Three rigid-hulled inflatable boats belonging to the Spanish Navy were stolen last Tuesday at Retín beach, between Barbate and Zahara de los Atunes, whilst participating in the military exercise Flotex26. According to El Mundo, military sources confirmed to the newspaper that the boats disappeared along with all the equipment they contained, including drysuits and tracking equipment, and that the same day a complaint was filed with the Civil Guard, which has opened an investigation to recover the material and detain those responsible.
The vessels, five metres long with outboard motors, were transporting marines to the shore as part of a planned landing within the framework of the exercises. Once ashore, the boats were concealed. When the military personnel returned to the beach, they found the boats had disappeared.
Exercise Flotex26 took place throughout the week in waters off the Strait of Gibraltar, the Gulf of Cádiz and the Alboran Sea. It is one of the Navy's principal annual training exercises in the area.
Although not officially confirmed, the investigation points, according to El Mundo, to the theft having been perpetrated by a group of petaqueros—organisations dedicated to supplying fuel to drug-trafficking boats at sea—which could have intended to use the military vessels for that activity.
The incident has set off alarm bells in security forces and drug-fighting agencies, interpreted as a new escalation in the aggression with which drug-trafficking mafias are acting on the Andalusian coast, and particularly in the Gibraltar Strait area.
The theft occurs in a context of increasingly frequent and violent attacks against security forces, with documented use of military weapons. In recent years these clashes have caused injuries to several officers and the deaths of four Civil Guards.
Two of them died two years ago in Barbate port after a drug-trafficking boat ran down the speedboat they were travelling in. The two most recent victims are officer Germán Pérez and captain Jerónimo Jiménez, who lost their lives a few weeks ago 80 miles off the Huelva coast whilst pursuing another drug-trafficking boat.
These latest deaths revealed that the Huelva coastline has become, like the Strait of Gibraltar, a new area of operations for drug-trafficking organisations that use violence to protect the drugs they transport, without backing down from confrontation with state forces. Professional organisations in the sector have again denounced the lack of resources in what they describe as an unequal struggle.
Source: El Mundo