Not a single moment this Monday did it stop raining on Barbate. A very fine water that soaked into the bones of the dozen civil guards who, together with a good handful of neighbors and many other journalists, spent the day until dark in front of the courts of the Cadiz town waiting for news about the eight detained by the death of two civil guards, on Friday night at the mouth of the port. After taking statements from the eight, the judge sent six to prison, all accused of two crimes of murder, four attempts, serious injuries, smuggling and resistance and attack against authority.
Two others, who that cursed Friday were not on the drug boat but picked up three of its crew on the beaches of Sotogrande, were released on the charge of concealing murder.
This Monday the residents of Barbate shouted at the drug traffickers again. But they were no longer cheers, cheers, or olés like those heard on Friday night at the mouth of the port, to the shame of many. In front of the courts, both upon the arrival of the detainees and hours later during their transfer to prison, the people of Barbate shouted at them, “murderers” and “criminals.”
The two suspects who left the court on foot through the main door told what their relatives had already explained minutes before in a nearby cafeteria. “We have not done anything and the others who are inside are not the murderers either. We have nothing to do with what happened in Barbate. We are innocent. Those who killed the civil guards are free. “They detained us because we were in a place where there was a raid.”
Some explanations that did not convince either the magistrate or the prosecutor who requested prison for all, a request shared by lawyer Pablo Martín Bajarado, appearing as an accusation on behalf of the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC).
Since they were arrested on Saturday, in two batches, the judicial police from the Cádiz command prepared a report with evidence of the participation of the eight detainees in the port tragedy and the presence of six of them in the drug boat that passed over of the zodiac of the Special Group of Underwater Activities of the Civil Guard (GEAS) in which there were six civil guards.
Investigators place Francisco Javier Martín Pérez, 45, a resident of the Junquillos neighborhood in La Línea de la Concepción and known as the Goat, at the controls of the rubber. A guy who boasts of his nickname for “placing fear in people” and who, at the age of 21, was already arrested for drug trafficking. He started with tobacco smuggling with Gibraltar, but then he became close to hashish drug traffickers until he ended up patrolling large boats. One more character among the many with his profile in Campo de Gibraltar and who during the pandemic led a revolt in La Línea by stoning a bus that was transporting to the municipality a group of 28 grandparents who had been evicted from a nursing home in Alcalá del Valley due to a coronavirus outbreak. An unscrupulous guy with three pending trials, including one for gender violence.
The rest of the detainees who slept in prison this Monday night were in the drug boat. A boat that arrived at the port three days before the tragedy seeking refuge from the storm. A commander thought that the drug traffickers would be scared by the presence of the police squad and that they would flee into a sea that was unnavigable due to the waves and zero visibility. But that is the behavior of criminals from another era, when bad guys respected the rules.