Equatorial Guinea’s exiled opposition leader, Severo Moto, has been arrested in Spain after allegedly trying to transport illegal weapons

Equatorial Guinea’s exiled opposition leader, Severo Moto, has been arrested in Spain after allegedly trying to send illegal weapons to the oil-rich African nation.
The arrest was the latest twist in a tangled case that has implicated figures such as Mark Thatcher, the son of the former British Prime Minister, and Simon Mann, the Eton-educated mercenary, who is facing trial in Malabo for his alleged role in a failed 2004 coup attempt. Mr Thatcher, who now lives on the Spanish Costa del Sol, was given a suspended jail sentence after he pleaded guilty to unwittingly financing the coup attempt and breaking the anti-mercenary laws of South Africa. The arrest of Mr Moto raises questions about whether a fresh coup attempt was under way.
According to Spanish court sources, he was arrested on Monday on the orders of a judge after weapons were found in the boot of a car in the port of Sagunto, near Valencia, on March 6. Mr Moto has run a self-proclaimed government-in-opposition from Spain, where he has had political asylum since 1986. He was sentenced in absentia to 62 years in prison in Equatorial Guinea for his alleged role in the failed coup against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema. His status as a political refugee was revoked by Spanish authorities in 2005 after they accused him of using the country as a base for several coup attempts against the Government in Equatorial Guinea. The Spanish Supreme Court overturned the ruling on appeal last month, stating that Mr Moto posed no danger to Spain. Mr Moto has denied any role in the attempted overthrow of the Government. Critics have accused the Spanish Socialist Government of being too close to the regime of Mr Obiang, which is considered to have one of the worst human rights records in Africa. The former Spanish colony is the third-largest African oil producer. Equatorial Guinea issued an international arrest warrant for Mr Thatcher last month, accusing him of being a prime instigator behind the plot to overthrow Mr Obiang on behalf of Mr Moto, in return for access to the oil wealth of the country. Mr Thatcher has admitted to paying $275,000 (£128,000) to charter a helicopter used in the coup attempt. He claimed he thought that it would be used for commercial purposes.
The prosecution in Equatorial Guinea said that Mr Mann implicated Mr Thatcher in the plot. It said: “Thatcher knew all about the operation. If we can gather enough evidence we will start a case against him.” Armengol Engonga, the deputy opposition leader in exile of Equatorial Guinea, urged caution yesterday over the arrest of Mr Moto.
“As long as we don’t know what this accusation is based on and the nature of the charges, we cannot say anything,” he told the AFP news agency. Mr Obiang has called parliamentary elections for May 4, about a year earlier than expected. The trial of Mr Mann, who was arrested four years ago, is expected to begin after the vote and could be embarrassing for Britain and Spain as he seeks to show he had official support for his alleged attempt to overthrow the Government.

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Gary Glitter planning to buy a posh pad in Puerto Banus

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National Police officers received a tip off that the group was transferring ‘hashish’ in a van to the United Kingdom

The gang were stopped by National Police officers after they received a tip off that the group was transferring ‘hashish’ in a van to the United Kingdom. According to the National Police, they carried out operation ‘Rostel’ in a bid to stop the gang, after they discovered that there was an organised group based in south-east Spain who had managed to smuggle a large quantity, thought to be about a tonne, of the drug through a Murcian port. They said that they suspected the drugs were bound for the UK and that they expected it to be transferred in vehicles through France and across the Channel. Police discovered a member of the group getting ready to load a van at a villa in Garruchal, where one of the gang’s main members resides and following extensive investigation, they raided a house in the Benijófar area. They arrested three people at the house in Benijófar and found a van outside the house containing 500 kilograms of hashish. Later, following a judicial court order, the National Police raided the house in Garruchal and arrested two more people, as well as seizing a Russian manufactured pistol and removing a luxury car from the property for further investigation.

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Tamboskaya mafia organisation Vladislav Reznik being investigated on the orders of a Spanish judge

Vladislav Reznik, a deputy of Putin's United Russia party and the chairman of the State Duma Financial Markets Committee, is being investigated on the orders of a Spanish judge for alleged links to the Tamboskaya mafia organisation.The gang is accused of a series of serious crimes including murder, kidnap, arms and drugs trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and has been mentioned in connection with match fixing UEFA cup games.A luxury villa belonging to Mr Reznik in the exclusive La Toro resort on the island of Majorca was raided by the Guardia Civil who seized computers, files, and works of art including paintings and sculptures.
Cars, including a Mercedes SL 600, a Toyota SUV and a Renault Clio, were also confiscated from the property, which is reportedly protected by a sophisticated security system.Mr Reznik, who was not at his Spanish home at the time of the raids, is being investigated over his supposed connections with fellow Russian Gennady Petrov, the suspected kingpin of an international crime organisation that allegedly used a network of Spanish registered companies to launder money earned through illicit activities.Petrov, who also has a property on the Balearic Island, was arrested in June along with more than a dozen others as part of the ongoing Operation Troika, led by Spanish Judge Balthasar Garzon.It has emerged that Mr Reznik, who declared earnings of $47m in 2006, bought his Majorcan villa – named Casa Artemis – from Petrov several years ago and the pair were regular seen together on the island.According to local sources, Mr Reznik was a well known member of the island's Russian billionaire elite and regularly attended services at Majorca's Russian Orthodox Church and played alongside Petrov in golf tournaments held exclusively for Russian visitors at the local club.It is thought that Judge Garzon is seeking an international arrest warrant for Mr Reznik but is being thwarted by his immunity as a Senator of the Russian state.

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Guardia Civil is currently investigating the discovery of a body, in an advanced stage of decomposition, in waters close to sa Foradada

Guardia Civil is currently investigating the discovery of a body, in an advanced stage of decomposition, in waters close to sa Foradada, between Deya and Soller. The body was found by a fisherman who, upon making a closer inspection of a large object he had seen floating in the water, realised that it was a human corpse and immediately called the emergency services. Units from the Guardia Civil, Maritime Rescue and Red Cross all took part in the recovery operation, which lasted some hours. Initial identification has been made even more difficult due to the fact that the body is so badly decomposed. In fact, at this stage, it is not even possible to say whether the body is that of a male or female.The corpse was taken to the Port of Soller where it was examined by judiciary and a forensic doctor. It had clearly been immersed in the sea for a long time and the Guardia Civil are presently consulting their missing persons records. The corpse has been taken to Palma where an autopsy is to be carried out

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SIX Americans arrested in Torrevieja for possession of cocaine

SIX arrested in Torrevieja for possession of cocaine and for allegedly being part of a narcotics ring.According to the police, all those arrested are American and aged between 30 and 40 years. They said that the gang ringleader, known as M.V.C, had been arrested previously in 2001 for the same drug related activities. The investigation into the Americans’ activities began three months ago when two properties in Torrevieja were identified as the bases where drug operations were being conducted. When arrested, the police found several amounts of cocaine in packages of various sizes and weights, totalling over 3.5 kilograms. According to reports, it was cocaine of the purest and highest grade and worth a lot of money on the street. Once the ringleader was arrested, police carried out several more raids in the Torrevieja area, subsequently arresting five more people and several more bags of cocaine.

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Six kilos of heroin has been taken off the streets of Alicante

Six kilos of heroin has been taken off the streets of Alicante and it is one of the largest drugs hauls.It occured when a North African man was being tailed from Murcia by the police as a suspect , he was stopped and resisted arrest by dangerous driving . The drugs were discovered in his car .The last major drug bust was in 2006 when more than 20 kilos was found on a boat in Alicante . This came in from Turkey via the so called Balkan route . Heroin is now less popular than cocaine and other synthetic drugs .

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Mayor built a house on non-urban land by claiming it was just a garden shed

Residents have complained that the mayor has built a house on non-urban land by claiming it was just a garden shed. According to the village’s inhabitants, Juan Jose Puchol (PSPV) had a house built of some 40 square metres, which he said was just a storeroom for tools and a DIY room, but then later installed a small bathroom and kitchen. They say the windows of the ground floor are blanked out so passers-by cannot see that it is lived in, and the upper floor windows ‘have sea views’. Properties built on land classified as ‘rural’ or ‘rustic’ must not be residential, meaning that planning permission is not available. In this respect, residents claim the mayor’s house was built without the correct legal licence. But the mayor says the council’s architects gave the green light to the construction. Residents have also complained that the mayor has ‘illegally’ built a property in the mountains nearby. They say he did so using an existing ruin and a renovation licence, but that in practice, the building is completely new and none of the existing walls has been used in the construction. According to the mayor, ‘it was just the restoration of an old farmhouse’.

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David George Hartley, 41, from Mansfield, Notts, was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for murder

David George Hartley, 41, from Mansfield, Notts, was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for the murder in June, 2002, of Danish holidaymaker Paul Pedersen.
He was also sentenced to a further two years imprisonment for stealing 200 euros - then worth about £135 - from his victim after strangling him.Hartley denied the charges.The written sentence was published at the Barcelona provincial court today following Hartley's conviction by a jury of nine at the end of a five-day trial last month.Hartley met Pedersen at a campsite near Barcelona airport in June, 2002. They became friends and shared the same tent, the court heard.
"Witnesses from the campsite said they were always together," says the written sentence.On the night of June 23, the jury heard during the trial, Hartley attacked the Dane while he slept. He was strangled and 200 euros were stolen from his pocket. Hartley fled, first to Benidorm and then back to Britain.
He was arrested in Nottinghamshire in the autumn and extradited to Spain two years later. The court heard when the trial opened that Hartley had been in custody for nearly six years.
The written judgement says that the jury found it had been proved that Hartley had grabbed his tent mate's neck in a stranglehold fully aware that he was likely to kill him.The jury had also believed the testimonies of two British witnesses who said that Hartley had told them about the killing.Former girlfriend Anne Trout said that Hartley, whom the court heard was a drug user and habitual drinker, had told her he believed he had strangled a man in Spain, but was not sure.
Alan Burns told the court how Hartley confessed to him over a drink in a bar in Benidorm. Weeping, Hartley said he had strangled a man at a campsite after "an indecent suggestion" was made, Mr. Burns said.When the trial opened Hartley denied killing Pedersen and stealing his money. But he refused to testify.His defence lawyer said there was no evidence to prove the allegations and asked the jury to acquit Hartley.

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The Latin Kings are the best-known among the Hispanic youth gangs that have formed in Spain among the immigrants from its former colonies.

They call themselves kings and queens. They rule over streets they have named the Inca, Aztec or Hispanic kingdom. They believe in God, honour and brotherhood. And whoever breaks the code of silence, does so at his own risk. The Latin Kings are the best-known among the Hispanic youth gangs that have formed in Spain among the immigrants from its former colonies. Gradually, Spanish police experts are beginning to understand the mentality of the street gangs born or based on models in poor and crime-infested neighbourhoods in the Americas. The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation was initially formed to help and defend Latin American immigrants in the Chicago area of the United States in the 1940s. Its members later became involved in violent crimes. The Spanish branch of the Latin Kings was launched in 2000 by the young Ecuadorian Eric Velastegui, known as King Wolverine, who is now serving a prison sentence for rape. US leaders of the Latin Kings visiting Spain, however, have downplayed the group's violent reputation, and evidence from the north-eastern region of Catalonia suggests that such gangs have the potential of being transformed into constructive social forces. The Latin Kings' big rival in Spain are the Netas, a gang founded in the prisons of Puerto Rico in the 1970s. Other gangs include Dominican Don't Play (DDP), many of whose members come from the Dominican Republic. The Madrid DDP has begun to sell drugs and acquired firearms, the daily El Pais reported. Recently, evidence has even emerged of the presence in Catalonia of the Mara Salvatrucha and the Mara 18, Central American groups known for their extreme violence. In the Madrid region alone, the number of gang members tripled in three years to about 1,300 by 2007, police estimated. Nearly 300 of them were regarded as violent. The main gangs, which are present in several cities across Spain, are hierarchically structured, tribe-like organizations. They are characterized by mystical symbols, an ethos of religiosity and machoism, and an ideology of defending the Latin American identity against an environment perceived as racist and hostile.
The Latin Kings, for instance, wear rap-style clothes and black-and-gold bead necklaces. Their symbol of a five-point crown represents respect, honesty, unity, knowledge and love. The gangs tend to place women in a secondary role, with the Latin Kings as the only one to have a female section. Many of the gangs have a double nature, with leisure activities such as football alternating with robberies or extortion which new members can be ordered to commit as a kind of initiation rite. Dozens of gang members have been detained on charges ranging from kidnappings and threats to attacks and killings. Most of the violence takes place between rival gangs, but former members have also told courts about the beatings faced by those who break the internal rules. "We were told to pay 1,200 euros (1,700 dollars), or we'd be burned alive," two girls who had tried to leave the Latin Kings told a Madrid judge. The growth of the gangs is based on the rapid increase of Latin American immigration to Spain. The overall number of immigrants has soared from 1.8 per cent of the Spanish population in 1990 to more than 10 per cent. The largest groups include 420,000 Ecuadorians and 260,000 Colombians. "Immigrants never see their children, because they work 23 hours a day. The kids are on the street, in search of a (new) family," King Mission, a US representative of the Latin Kings, explained during a visit to Spain. Gangs like the Latin Kings also give a sense of purpose and self-esteem to youths who may come from neighbourhoods riddled with gang violence in their own countries, grew up without their parents who emigrated before them, and who are now struggling with the difficulties of adapting to a foreign culture. In 2007, Latin street gangs did not commit any killings in Spain for the first time in several years. The decline was attributed to police crackdowns and, in some regions, to attempts to integrate the gangs into Spanish society.
While the conservative Madrid authorities outlawed the Latin Kings in 2007, liberal Catalonia took the opposite approach, giving them the status of a cultural association.
Representatives of the Latin Kings and Netas even visited the regional parliament, explaining to legislators that they were planning to make joint musical recordings to bury their hostilities. International experts on street gangs have hailed Catalonia's ground-breaking approach, but it has not entirely eradicated inter-gang violence.

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Spanish police has seized seven tons of marijuana and detained five people in recent crackdowns in the southern province of Andalucia

Spanish police has seized seven tons of marijuana and detained five people in recent crackdowns in the southern province of Andalucia, provincial commissary Jose Maria Deira said Tuesday."The drug, coming from Morocco, is very pure, which has a market value of 10 million euros (about 14 million U.S. dollars),"Deira said, "it is the biggest volume seized in Andalucia this year."Deria said the marijuana was captured on two ships respectively, one ton in Cadiz on Sept. 21, and the other six tons in San Lucar de Barrameda a day later."It took several days to report the seizure because the police was trying to make more arrests and seizures," police authorities said.Deira added that all the detainees were Spanish and they would face judicial punishment.Spain is one of the main arrival points in Europe of cocaine from South America and marijuana from Africa.

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Body of a woman has been found floating on a beach of La Manga del Mar Menor in Murcia.

Body of a woman has been found floating on a beach of La Manga del Mar Menor in Murcia.Lifesavers found the body of the woman on the Galúa beach around 5pm last night and alerted the Guardia Civil. There are no details about her possible identity or nationality as yet.It comes after the body of another woman was found on Monday floating in swimming pool in a water park, also in La Manga.

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