The Civil Guard yesterday hunted down the six drug traffickers who were traveling on the boat that took the lives of two agents in the port of Barbate (Cádiz), including the pilot who managed to escape the first round of arrests. In addition, two other criminals were arrested who were waiting for them on the mainland in Sotogrande – the refuge of the elite on the Cádiz coast – to try to continue their escape after ramming the patrol boat. In total, eight detainees, of Spanish nationality, with a long criminal history behind them. But more arrests are not ruled out, according to sources close to the investigation.

For all of them, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, predicted “zero impunity” from the Cádiz Civil Guard Command, where he went to chair the Technical Coordination Table in which the circumstances of the tragic event were analyzed.

It so happens that the head of the Interior had been in the Cadiz province on the same Friday morning to launch the fourth Special Security Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar. There he commented that the area “is a safe place” after more than five years dedicating material and human resources in the fight against drug trafficking.

Not 12 hours after those words they “murdered” – a term used by the former judge of the National Court – the civil guards Miguel Ángel Gonzalez and David Pérez. “Let the drug traffickers know that they have hit hard, they are cornered,” Grande-Marlaska warned. After his statement before the media, in which he did not accept questions, he reported that the Armed Institute had managed to catch the pilot of the drug boat and two other occupants who fled through the mountains.

Previously, the Civil Guard had arrested the first three drug traffickers – aged 21, 24 and 28 – who are charged with two crimes of homicide and serious injuries to agents. The two who were waiting in Sotogrande—aged 34 and 54—are being investigated for crimes of concealment and serious resistance. The eight have a string of police records ranging from drug trafficking, robbery, money laundering and attacks on law enforcement officers.

Police sources explained to La Vanguardia that although more arrests are not expected due to the attack of the drug boat, future arrests related to the people who cheered the drug traffickers from the port of Barbate or users of social networks who celebrated the death have not been ruled out. of the civil guards.

The same sources, close to the investigation, also reject the idea that the death of the agents was caused by the means used – a 14-meter drug boat in front of a zodiac – but rather by “the unexpected aggressive action” of the boat’s crew. . However, the investigation, conducted by court number 1 of Barbate, is in a very embryonic phase, waiting for all the detainees to be brought to justice.

Neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the Civil Guard wanted to explain yesterday which unit of the Armed Institute gave the order for the semi-rigid boat of the GEAS submariners – which are normally used to rescue victims – to go to identify the drug boats that were sheltered in the port of Barbate from the Karlotta storm. Nor did they offer data about the context in which this operation was carried out, which ended in the most tragic way possible.