The president of the Junta of Andalusia, the popular Juanma Moreno, has sent a letter to the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in which he demands the recovery of the Coordination Body for Operations against Drug Trafficking (OCON) South, an elite unit of the Civil Guard created in 2018 to combat the arrival of drug shipments on the Andalusian coasts and which was dismantled by the Ministry of the Interior by surprise four years ago in a decision never explained.
Moreno justifies this request in view of the increasing activity that these mafias have been developing in recent months in different areas of the community, as well as what he considers a lack of adequate means on the part of the various state security forces to neutralize them. According to a press release issued this Sunday by the Junta of Andalusia, Moreno conveys in the letter to Sánchez his “concern” over the fact that Andalusia has become “an operations base” for different drug clans and networks.
“We are no longer talking about a specific region, but the entire coastline and part of the interior are targets of drug traffickers. We have become familiar with the image of how, in broad daylight, drug speedboats operate and take refuge, for example, in the Guadalquivir riverbed,” Moreno states. He recalls that a week ago a man was killed in Utrera (Seville) as a result of a shooting and, just one day later, three people ― an eight-month pregnant woman, another 62 years old, and a minor ― died in Isla Cristina (Huelva) in a similar incident.
“And I also want to remember David, Miguel Ángel, Germán, and Jerónimo, the four Civil Guard agents killed in the last two years in Barbate and Huelva in the line of duty, trying to fight this scourge. We are facing a rise in insecurity that requires a strong response from the State,” Moreno emphasizes in his letter. For all these reasons, the Andalusian president demands that the Government reactivate OCON-South, a unit that, he adds, while it was active “proved effective in containing these mafias.”
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During the four years this group was active, made up of about 150 agents, it participated in most of the major operations that between 2018 and 2022 led to the arrest of the major hashish traffickers on the southern coasts of Spain and to a spectacular increase in the seized shipments, tripling the quantities confiscated before it started operating. Its results were recognized by the minister himself, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who in June 2021 decorated its top officer, then commander David Oliva, who was later promoted to lieutenant colonel. Having become in these years “the scourge of the traffickers,” as described by sources from the armed institute, the Interior had to provide a bodyguard to the high command after he was threatened with death by criminal organizations.
Despite these results, in September 2022 the group was dissolved as part of what Interior then described as a restructuring of the Civil Guard units fighting drug trafficking, and its members were sent to other assignments. Months later, the head of the unit and two other officers were charged by the judge of the National Court Alejandro Abascal accused of bribery and disclosure of secrets.
According to the investigations, lieutenant colonel Oliva allegedly pressured a subordinate to confirm or deny whether, as he suspected, he was being investigated by the Civil Guard’s Internal Affairs, responsible for combating corruption within the armed institute. In reality, he was not under investigation, but the exchange of WhatsApp messages with two other suspects led to his indictment in a case whose trial has not yet taken place.
