The parents of Mari Luz suspected this man from the first moment. Juan José Cortés, said this morning: “We know that it is him, we are sure, and this

The parents of Mari Luz suspected this man from the first moment. Juan José Cortés, said this morning: “We know that it is him, we are sure, and this is no surprise to me”One of the suspects of the death of Mari Luz confessed today to the Spanish police that the girl died in an accident, falling down the stairs. Santiago del Valle García also said that the girl went with him to his house willingly. The man is one of three neighbours of the Cortés family detained yesterday in the afternoon by the Spanish police and he had already a previous record as a paedophile.His wife, Isabel García, has also been arrested, although initially there is no suspicion that she has intervened in the actions, but only to interrogate her. This man was the number one suspect of the homicide since the first moment, mainly because the little girl was last seen alive while walking in front of his house, in the same neighbourhood, El Torrejon, where she resided with her family. Mari Luz disappeared on January 13, when she went to buy sweets at a kiosk. The sister of the suspect was freed meantime. The couple keeps on being questioned.
The principal suspect of the death of Mari Luz lived a few meters away from the Cortés family. The man went away from the district the following day after the disappearance of the child, with fear of retaliations. The Police, later on, found and questioned Santiago in Granada. He was detained some days later after the arrest, but was released at that time since there was no sufficient proof to indict him.
The police arrested him again yesterday in Pajaroncillo, a village of 100 inhabitants in the hills of Cuenca, hundreds of kilometres away of Huelva, together with his wife, Isabel, and sister. This arrest was done as a result of new evidence arising from the autopsy carried out on Mari Luz Cortés. He had travelled there, to receive his monthly pension, according to police sources. After his initial statement, during which he confessed to the crime, he now assures that the child "fell" and accidentally died. Frightened and with fear of being incriminated, he launched Mari Luz body to the river Huelva.
The 52-year-old man, Santiago del Valle García, had already been arrested for paedophilia and sexual abuses, including to one of his daughters, which was the motive why a judge had issued an order to keep the child at a distance from her father, to prevent him from harassing her again, according to police sources. The Spanish authorities suspect that the cause of the crime has a sexual nature. In 2002, Santiago was convicted by a court in Sevilla of continued sexual abuse against his own daughter, he tried to accuse the gymnastics teacher of abusing his 5 year old daughter and claimed compensations of 60.100 euros.He was condemned to 2 years and 9 months of imprisonment. In a later audience in the year of 2006, a judge considered that Santiago suffered 75% of paranoid schizophrenia and that his wife, Isabel suffered 65%. They children, a girl who has now 15 and a 9 year old boy, were taken from their custody and were sent to a 'foster' care family.

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Algerian gang based in Malaga

Suspects are thought to be responsible for more than 300 crimes, including robberies with violence at domestic properties, document falsification, drug trafficking, crimes using stolen credit cards and conspiracy. The Guardia targeted the suspects by studying documentation seized in several raids. The gang was identified as being made up of 14 Algerians, six Spanish, Four Morrocans and one French person. The gang was divided into three cells directed by an Algerian head based in Malaga. In and around Cieza, in Murcia, the Guardia Civil carried out three operations which resulted in the recent arrest of five people thought to be involved in 21 robberies with violence at homes. A major operation took place in Cartagena recently when some 40 officers of the National Police swarmed the streets of the suburb of Lo Campana in an anti-drugs operation targeted at three families said to be drug traffickers in control of a large part of the illegal market. The three families are said to have cooperated closely and offered drugs on a menu system with fixed prices.

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Operation Toroyano a fishing boat carrying drugs was intercepted close to the shoreline

Puerto de Mazarrón, a major case involves the alleged smuggling of huge quantities of drugs coming in from North Africa. The criminal activities are said to have involved drugs being carried by large vessels sailing up the Mediterranean. The drugs were then dropped off onto fishing boats which brought them into Puerto de Mazarrón. The network is said to have been operated by a Spanish-Moroccan group. In Operation Toroyano a fishing boat carrying drugs was intercepted close to the shoreline. The boat sunk but suspects who dived in the water trying to escape were later arrested suffering from hypothermia. Navy divers have now succeeded in recovering 1,785 kilos of hashis from the sunken fishing boat to bring the total amount of drugs seized in the operation up to 2,600 kilos. Organised crime gangs that attack homes, petrol stations and businesses have been a particular target for Guardia Civil Action. This month a major operation, code named Centry, saw the Guardia break up a gang that had been attacking locations throughout the Costa del Sol. A total of 19 people were arrested and another six are being sought.

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Allan Foster wanted for a gangland shooting on Tyneside has gone to the top of a Most Wanted list after becoming one of just two villains on the run

Allan Foster wanted for a gangland shooting on Tyneside has gone to the top of a Most Wanted list after becoming one of just two villains on the run from police on the Costa del Crime.Allan Foster is believed to have flown from his Spanish hideaway to assassinate David ‘Noddy’ Rice in South Shields in May 2006.Detectives believe Foster flew out of the country the day after the killing, which happened at a seaside car park near Marsden Grotto, and has remained a fugitive since.
Last month Foster, 31, was named among 10 suspects by Crimestoppers on a most-wanted website targeting the Costa del Sol.Now eight of those have been tracked down after support from the Spanish public and authorities, leaving just Foster and one other at large.An update from Crimestoppers yesterday said: “The Operation Captura campaign encourages anyone who recognises the wanted criminals on its website to call Crimestoppers from Spain, to give information anonymously on a dedicated Spanish free phone number. Calls are answered in the UK by Crimestoppers call handlers.“Crimestoppers worked with both UK and Spanish law enforcement agencies and the British Embassy to set up the operation.
“On the day of the publicity launch in Malaga, Most Wanted saw eight times more people visiting the site, with 77,000 page impressions on the first day. Two weeks after the launch, more than 700 calls had been received which produced 65 useful pieces of information.“Eight offenders have been located so far, for crimes including drug trafficking, murder and fraud.“In Spain, the concept has caught the public’s imagination. The Spanish media have continued their interest and media coverage of the campaign. Commentators have expressed considerable interest in setting up a similar mechanism to aid Spanish investigations.”The Spanish coastal resorts have been dubbed the Costa del Crime since the 1970s because hundreds of British criminals have fled there.Mr Rice, 42, was shot nine times by two masked men on the seafront at South Tyneside after being lured to the meeting by Steven Bevens, 39. Bevens worked for Foster, who police believe fired the fatal shots.
Last year Bevens was sentenced to life for murder, while getaway driver Derek Blackburn, 51, of Humberside, who turned informer, was given four years for assisting an offender, later cut to two and a half years.
Foster sometimes goes under the name Sean Wilkinson, and is known to have associates in the Kent area and links to the Canary Islands and Majorca.
He is also wanted for two offences of conspiring to supply controlled drugs and for the theft of a diamond ring.Yesterday a Northumbria Police spokesman said: “We are still trying to trace Allan James Foster. We would urge anyone who has knowledge of Mr Foster’s whereabouts to get in touch.”

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3.2 tons of cocaine were found in a swoop on an Elche warehouse

3.2 tons of cocaine were found in a swoop on an Elche warehouse in 2004
Sentencing has been released in the trial of the eight men charged after one of Valencia’s biggest ever drug hauls, three and a quarter tons of cocaine found in a lorry-load of bananas in the El Altet area of Elche four years ago. Total sentencing in the case amounts to more than 77 years and the smugglers will also have to pay the value the drug would have brought on the black market: more than 112 million €.The longest terms went to six of the suspects, who admitted their guilt and accepted sentences of 11 years, with two of them also getting another six months each for falsifying documents.
Two others claimed they had got lost looking for a car boot sale and were only at the warehouse where police swooped by mistake, but the court ruled it proved that their role in the smuggling operation was to distribute the cocaine. They received terms of five years and four months each.

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Ola Brunkert bled to death after a shard of glass pierced his neck

Civil Guard headquarters in Madrid said: "All the indications are that this was a tragic accident. "A glass door in the kitchen of the house was shattered and it appears that this man fell through the door. "He then managed to get out into the garden where he died."Brunkert had been a jazz drummer and a member of the blues band Slim's Blues Gang, before joining the pop group Science Poption in the mid-1960s. His first-known session with Abba was also the group's first single, People Need Love. Brunkert was one of only two musicians to appear on all of Abba's albums.

Ola Brunkert, the session drummer heard on nearly every Abba hit the legendary Swedish band had in the 1970s and early 1980s, has died after a freak accident on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca, local justice authorities said Monday.
The 61-year-old apparently bled to death after a shard of glass pierced his neck when he stumbled through a glass door leading from the kitchen to the garden of his holiday home where he lived alone. Authorities said after an initial post mortem examination that the musician apparently lost consciousness after falling, and then bled to death. The drummer was discovered by a neighbour who late Sunday chanced by the house, which is in a compound of holiday homes near Areta, in the east of Majorca. Authorities said the compound was largely empty during the winter months - accounting for no one being immediately available to offer first aid. Brunkert was one of the most sought-after session drummers in Sweden in the 1970s, and played in a variety of jazz and blues bands as well as on the Abba hits that dominated pop music from their 1974 hit Waterloo to the band's break-up in 1982.

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Mari Luz Cortés family they have received a ransom demand for two million Euros.

The family of the missing five year old girl, Mari Luz Cortés, who vanished from Huelva in the middle of January, says they have received a ransom demand for two million Euros.
They say they received a phone call from an individual yesterday, who demanded two million € to release the child. But at a press conference held today in the Plaza Rosa del Torrejón, in Huelva, the missing child’s uncle, Diego Cortés, lamented the call which he described as ‘upsetting and senseless’, as it was believed the call is a hoax. He said that the family ‘was prepared to negotiate’ in the case of serious calls, adding that if the family would go personally to rescue Mari Luz if necessary. He said there was no chance of the family raising a sum of two million €, but that 300,000€ was possible.

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Cannabis 78 packages on board, making up a total of 2.4 tons.The 12-metre inflatable speedboat was fitted with three powerful engines

A Civil Guard patrol at the mouth of the Guadalquivir in Sanlúcar de Barrameda on Tuesday morning came up with an unexpected discovery, a boat left close to shore, loaded with more than two tons of cannabis resin. La Voz Digital said there were 78 packages on board, making up a total of 2.4 tons.The 12-metre inflatable speedboat was fitted with three powerful engines, and would have allowed the smugglers to make the trip from Morocco in a very short time, the paper said. There was no sign of any of the crew.

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10 suspected members of a gang of drug dealers in Torrevieja

It’s been revealed that 10 suspected members of a gang of drug dealers who were arrested in Torrevieja last month passed themselves off as police officers to steal from other gangs who were trying to smuggle the drugs into Spain. The Civil Guard also say they were part of a much larger organisation which has been under investigation since last June, when almost a ton of cannabis was found in a Torrevieja garage inside a stolen car.Dubbed Operation Julo, the investigation has led to a total of 29 arrests since then and close to seven tons of cannabis confiscated by the authorities, together with six stolen top-range vehicles, thousands in cash, and weapons and other items worth more than half a million euros.
Seventeen of the suspects are Spaniards, EFE said.They operated in a number of Spanish provinces, and one of their main leaders was arrested with 13 other suspects in Murcia this January in La Manga del Mar Menor.

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One in five of the European Union's cocaine users lives in Spain

One in five of the European Union's cocaine users lives in Spain, and 3 percent of its own people are regular users, the U.S. State Department said Friday.
Spain also is Europe's largest consumer of designer drugs and hashish, while remaining a major transshipment site for cocaine imported from South and Central
America, the department said in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.
«The Spanish government ranks drug trafficking as one of its most important law enforcement concerns and continues to maintain excellent relations with U.S. counterparts,» the report released Friday said.
Spain is «the principal entry, transshipment, and consumption zone for the large quantities of South American cocaine and Moroccan cannabis destined for European consumer markets,» the report said. It also is «a major source and transit location for drug proceeds returning to South and Central America.
While Colombia remains apparently Spain's largest supplier of cocaine «information available suggests an increase in shipments of illicit cocaine from Bolivia. Bolivian cocaine is transshipped through Venezuela and Argentina by vessel or plane to the Iberian Peninsula.
In the face of such facts, the report indicated U.S. narcotics authorities are pleased with enforcement efforts by the Spanish national police, the Guardia Civil gendarmerie, customs services and autonomous regional police forces.
They «maintained an intense operational tempo during 2007, and as of early November were on track to seize near-record amounts of cocaine,» it said, and were active against distributors of synthetic drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy.
The report said Spanish authorities recorded two large hashish seizures in August, when the Civil Guard seized 5,549 kilograms and arrested nine people in Gerona and Seville. In October, authorities intercepted 4,600 kilograms and arrested 19 people in southwestern Spain.
The product was believed to have originated in North Africa and was transported to Spain by a large vessel, which is the usual route for hashish, the report said. It said most comes from Morocco or Algeria.

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