ARCHIVED - Drug smugglers initially hailed as heroes after rescuing Guardia Civil officers revealed to be villains after all
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Four drug smugglers who were initially hailed as heroes last week, when they rescued three Guardia Civil officers from the Mediterranean after a collision during a high-speed motorboat chase, are to be held in jail pending trial after it emerged that their decision to help their pursuers had been made only under extreme duress from other members of the forces of law and order.
The incident in question took place on Friday 4th October off the coast of Mijas in the province of Málaga, where the smugglers were attempting to bring ashore a large quantity of illegal drugs. During the chase the collision resulted in three Guardia Civil officers falling into the water, but far from rushing to their aid the smugglers instead made off at high speed while at the same time dumping many bundles of hashish overboard – the 80 packages recovered contained around 3 tons of the substance in total.
At the time the rescue of the struggling officers received a good deal of media attention both in Spain and abroad, but now the Guardia Civil have clarified the events and released video footage. This shows that initially the “narco-launch” headed directly towards the three men at high speed, even hitting one of them in a crash which would probably have killed him had it not been for the helmet he was wearing.
Fortunately, the crew of a Guardia helicopter which had also been taking part in the chase saw the plight of their companions and the aircraft descended to just a few metres above the surface of the water to intercept the smugglers as they attempted to make off. Eventually the traffickers realized that there was no escape, and obeyed the instructions issued from the helicopter to pick the three men up from the sea.
The Guardia Civil has supplied the facts of the case to a local newspaper in Ceuta, where the officers concerned are based, and is keen to make the truth as widely known as possible. This, they say, is an example of the dangers faced on a daily basis in the fight against drug smuggling, and to paint the villains as heroes by misreporting the facts is, according to the Guardia, to “trivialize” the nature of their efforts.
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