Spain: Guardia Civil implicated in drug trafficking
01 September 1999
Evidence of Guardia Civil involvement in drug trafficking networks has come to light in two recent controversial court cases. In August, a military judge granted three Guardia Civil officers, who were sentenced to eight years imprisonment in 1997 for drug trafficking, an open prison regime, seven months after they were jailed in Alcala de Henares military jail. The arrest of a Guardia Civil lieutenant colonel, Maximo Lopez Blanco, for hashish smuggling in August led a Guardia Civil association to condemn the incident and to demand the right to handle the prosecution in the case.
In October 1997, the Audiencia Nacional found 15 people guilty of drugs offences in the "Ucifa affair", including colonel Francisco Quintero Sanjuan, commander Jose Ramon Pindado Martinez and lieutenant Gonzalo Mendez Gutierrez, of the Guardia Civil's Unidad Central de Investigation Fiscal y Antidroga (Ucifa, Central Body of Customs and Drug Investigations). The court heard that between January 1988 and April 1991, Ucifa had become "an organisation of drug traffickers" whose crimes included the ordering of cocaine shipments from South America in order to confiscate them (thereby gaining false merits), the disappearance of 17 kilos of confiscated cocaine and 2 kilos of confiscated heroin, and the payment of informers with drugs. The Supreme Court confirmed the verdict on 11 January 1999, sentencing the three officers to eight years imprisonment, disqualifying them from public office for a further eight years, and fining them.
Anti-drug prosecutor Pablo Contreras criticised the military judge's decision to grant them an open prison regime. He called on the Audiencia Nacional to annul the order, claiming that the military judge had no competence in the case, and that the measure was unreasonable, as the defendants had not yet completed a twelfth of their sentences. The sentence, which entails the loss of their military status, was passed by a civil court, for a crime against public health (drug trafficking), which is in the civil legal code, not the military code. The defence lawyer said his clients are not responsible for existing legal loopholes and that, as they are in a military jail, it is a military judge who must decide their status.
Lopez Blanco was arrested on 2 August for his alleged involvement in a hashish smuggling network on the Catalan coast, near Tarragona. A Guardia Civil association, Coproper 6-J, asked to handle the prosecution, in order to shed light on the "shameful" events involving a Guardia Civil officer. The association expressed its total opposition to Lopez Blanco's activities, stressing that he had previously been linked to an investigation into a drug smuggling ring in Guipuzcoa.
El Pais, 6.8.99. 6 & 11.9.99, El Mundo 8.8.99.ste.mobi/b.js><