A long time ago the Casuals lost any label linked to the Barça ultras to become a branch of crime specialized in extortion, threats, beatings for commission and the theft of drugs from traffickers. Yesterday, the Mossos d’Esquadra culminated a complex judicial investigation with the arrest, for now, of 25 people accused of being part of the criminal organization.
The investigation is led by the head of the court of inquiry number 12 of Barcelona, ​​which accuses those arrested of the crimes of murder, kidnapping, threats, injuries, extortion, public disorder in the field of sport, cultivation and trafficking of marijuana and to integrate a criminal organization.
The investigations started in November, after the violent assault on a bar in Cornellà frequented by Espanyol radicals. An assault led by one of those arrested yesterday at his home in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, Francisco Pérez, alias Paco el Gordo. Precisely, an audio of the individual went viral a few weeks ago, after the invasion of his camp by Espanyol fans after the derby with Barça that gave the La Liga to the Blaugrana. The recording demanded a white-and-blue fan to erase a tattoo: “If you don’t take it off, I’ll stab you.”
The Mossos located Paco el Gordo while he was sleeping at his home in, but they did not have so much luck with what they consider the charismatic and unquestionable leader of the Casuals: Ricardo Mateo López, alias Lucho, who was not at his home in l’Hospitalet, where the first GEI agents who broke in at dawn found only the 15-year-old son.
After the first minutes of bewilderment and helplessness, the investigators of the General Information Commission and the kidnapping and extortion unit found that the suspect had left with one hand in front and one behind. There was nothing in the house to indicate the possibility that the man had received a last-minute blow. Rather, it appeared that Ricardo Maeto had spent the night away from home, and indeed the police found documentation relevant to the case.
The next few hours are crucial for the researchers. They have in front of them some interrogations from which they expect little or nothing, because all the arrested are tired and will not open their mouths. But they will analyze the confiscated documents and everything they can get from the emptying of the phones of the arrested.
And this is the key to understanding why investigators link some of the Casuals with three murders of drug traffickers in Catalonia.
In March, the Mossos arrested two men accused of murdering and trying to dispose of the body of a man they had killed in a brothel in Grà cia. They were surprised in a van in Via Augusta. The investigators have no doubts about the authorship of this narco’s crime, but they will link one of those arrested yesterday to the murder as a cover-up or even as someone in charge of ordering the execution.
The other two are crimes of drug traffickers for which investigators do not have perpetrators at this time. In February, an attacker shot and killed Mohamed Gdari, brother of the well-known rapper Rachid Gdari, alias El Sardina, in the middle of the street in Badia del Vallès, also near the Civil Guard barracks. Two months later, in April, a trafficker was stabbed to death in Plaça del Nou in Barcelona’s Zona Franca
The two crimes are analyzed by the Criminal Investigation Division, with the respective investigating judges, despite the fact that the police teams are certain that the Casuals are related to both murders. Suspicions could be confirmed based on the material seized in this latest operation. Here is the relevance of what has been dubbed the Hydra case.
