A SPECIALIST Policia Nacional unit wants to fight narco traffickers operating in the Campo de Gibraltar but claims to have been blocked by Spain’s Interior Ministry.
The El Mundo newspaper reports that the Police Intervention Unit (UIP) is on stand-by to go to areas if required
It has weapons of war, special ballistic uniforms and vehicles that could be used to contain drug trafficking gangs operating off the south coast.
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The UIP reportedly asked to intervene on several occasions but their requests were not heeded.
The Interior Ministry said that ‘there has been no request in that regard’.
The first time the UIP wanted to get involved was when a narco-boat killed two Guardia Civil officers in Barbate in February 2024.
“We got silence for an answer,” El Mundo was told.
The latest request was earlier this month when a trafficker shot at a Policia Nacional officer who was trying to enter a drug warehouse on a Sevilla industrial estate in Seville.
The man opened fire with a weapon of war and hit the officer in the stomach, leaving him badly wounded.
The UIP branch of the SUP police union has expressed its anger at the Interior Ministry as problems get worse.
A source told El Mundo: “We don’t understand why the Ministry won’t send us to areas most affected by drug trafficking to work with our colleagues on the ground.”
The UIP have vehicles that allow them to access areas of rivers with low flow that are difficult to access to conventional units due to the terrain- popular areas for narco boats.
They also have access to high-protection ballistic helmets and shields capable of withstanding war-calibre bullets such as those used by drug traffickers in the Campo de Gibraltar.
“We have been warning for years that the Campo de Gibraltar and its surroundings are becoming an area of difficult police control, where drugs are rampant, where criminal organisations act with intolerable impunity, exhibiting weapons of war and resources far superior to those of the State Security Forces and Corps that serve in the demarcation”, the SUP union stated.
“It is urgent to reinforce police units with UIP officers who have among their specific missions, the prevention, maintenance and restoration of citizen security and action in situations of declared police alert, for the commission of crimes of a terrorist nature or common crime, as well as the establishment of controls and other police devices”.
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Disturbing news that the Ministry seem not able to cooperative with UIP. who are better equipped to take on the Narcos.