ISSUE NO. 1634
27 Oct. - 2 Nov. 2016
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AXARQUÍA - COSTA TROPICAL YOUR PAPER, YOUR VOICE, YOUR OPINION
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Sports complex
DON’T MISS OUR PROPERTY SPECIAL INSIDE! PAGES 27 - 40
Photo Credit: Guardia Civil
Fruit drugs gang smashed
A NEW sports facility is to be named after long-distance swimmer Christian Jongeneel
in honour of his sporting prowess and his charitable fundraising. See page 4
Men arrested TWO men were taken into custody accused of a string of thefts from cars parked in Nerja. The vehicles mainly belonged to for-
eign holidaymakers who were often using rented vehicles, according to the police. See page 7
Loyalty rewarded VELEZ-MALAGA residents who choose to support local businesses could be rewarded for their loyalty with a getaway to Northern Spain or Portugal.
The holidays are part of the ‘Travel with your Commerce’ campaign, which is about to kick off in Velez for the 13th year running. See page 8
Ex-mayor in court THE former mayor of Alcaucin, José Manuel Martín Alba, has appeared in court in Malaga accused of allowing the construction of illegal properties on undeveloped land and pleaded not guilty along with six other defendants. See page 12 By John Smith Officers of the Guardia Civil have discovered Torrox was being used in a major operation by a drugs gang to ship narcotics from Spain to the UK. The operation involved hiding the drugs in vacuum packed containers and placing them among strongly scented oranges. The aim was to conceal the scent from sniffer dogs used at the ports as the drugs entered Britain. But the gang’s operations were thwarted after a ran-
dom stop by a Malaga-based Guardia Civil traffic officer when he decided to inspect a lorry on the A7. The driver ran off and the officer subsequently found 32 packages with more than 1,000 kilos of hashish amongst the fruit. As a result of this find, officers were able to trace the entire organisation involved in the smuggling which operated from premises in Torrox, Marbella, Estepona, Seville Los Palacios, Villafranca and Alcala de Guadaira. The gang had formed two
companies to import and then export shipments of oranges legally and regularly from Spain to the UK. The drugs were carefully vacuum packed in a house located in the town of Alcala de Guadaira and then hidden in boxes of oranges. These were placed in the central part of the trailer surrounded by pallets loaded with oranges without drugs. Sniffer dogs appear not to have been able to detect the drugs hidden in this way. A total of 18 people from Algeria, France, Paraguay,
Portugal and Spain were arrested including two gunmen who had been hired to protect the shipments. The seized oranges have been passed to a food bank in Seville whilst the suspects have been passed to the courts.
Knife fight A VELEZ-MALAGA street erupted into violence when two men got into a knife fight apparently after a minor traffic incident with police eventually being called to break it up and arrest those responsible. See page 13