The Mossos d’Esquadra have dismantled a criminal group dedicated to drug trafficking, especially marijuana, in a macro-operation with its epicenter in El Prat de Llobregat, which has resulted in twelve arrests and the dismantling of six plantations.
About 200 personnel participated in the operation, which began at 5:30 a.m., including researchers, BRIMO, ARRO, the canine unit, the underground unit and the drone unit.
The investigation is supervised by court number 4 of El Prat, the town where most of the searches and arrests have been carried out. In total, 10 entries and searches have been carried out, eight of them in El Prat, one in Sant Adrià de Besòs (Barcelona) and another in Tarragona.
The epicenter of the device has been the area around Plaza de Orcasitas, in the Sant Cosme del Prat neighborhood, where marijuana plantations have been located hidden in the basement and in the attics of buildings, spaces that were accessed by drilling into the roof and the land of the buildings.
In statements to journalists, the head of the Territorial Investigation Unit of the Southern Metropolitan Police Region, Oscar Duran, has indicated that the clans present in this area have appropriated the homes to house marijuana plantations there.
In addition to the Mossos, local police officers also participated in the device deployed in El Prat, to whom Duran thanked for their “fundamental support” for “their knowledge of the neighborhood and the clans that operate there.” A dozen Endesa technicians have also participated in the operation, since they are also accused of a crime of electricity fraud.
Duran has explained that these blocks of flats in the Plaza de Orcasitas, an area known as the seventh phase, have “air chambers” both in their upper and lower parts, rooms that the clans access by piercing the floor and ceiling and which they convert into basements and attics in which they install marijuana plantations.
“These homes do not have their intended use, which was to provide a home for people without resources. On the contrary, these clans take over these homes and carry out this illicit activity,” indicated the police official, who also highlighted and thanked the work. of the Prat City Council to recover the function of these properties.
In addition to the six marijuana plantations dismantled, Duran has indicated that other drugs have also been seized, although he has not given more details of the final balance of the operation, which remains under secrecy.
Last year, the Mossos and the Prat Local Police already dismantled an entire block in the Sant Cosme neighborhood that had become an “immense marijuana factory”, the council covered it with 60 tons of reinforced concrete to completely disable it and prevent it from being used for farming again.
