Just then, word comes through that the three men who swam ashore from that boat had, after all, been caught by Guardia Civil hiding in a nearby derelict warehouse. There is jubilation among the Guardia Civil officers, especially when they hear that the men surrendered without any resistance.
Half an hour later, Figuera invites me into the main building of the Guardia Civil next to the quay. As we walk through the office area I notice three scruffy men in damp clothes sitting in front of a desk having what looks like a friendly chat with a plain-clothes officer sitting opposite them.
Figuera proudly points out these are, indeed, the men who jumped off the hash boat and they are being ‘interrogated’ by a Guardia Civil detective. It looks more like an informal chat and two of the ‘prisoners’ are sitting there smoking. They all look extremely relaxed, even maybe relieved.
Figuera explains: ‘Here in Spain we treat all prisoners with respect. I mean they are human beings like us. They most probably have families to support and, sure, they’ve got themselves mixed in crime but there are many in the Guardia Civil who feel that busting hash gangs is taking up much too much of our time. We should be concentrating on the big boys; the terrorists, the coke and heroin smugglers, the people smugglers.’
It seems that Figuera is trying to make a point about the ‘seriousness’ of hash smuggling and the criminals who carry it out. Figuera continues: ‘Hash is everywhere here in Spain. It’s smoked on the streets, in people’s homes, even in shops and restaurants. Maybe it’s time to legalise it and let us get on with catching the really evil gangsters and terrorists.’
As Figuera talks, I watch further interaction between the three hash-smuggling suspects and their so-called interrogator. Suddenly one of the men gets up and disappears through a door. No one even reacts to him leaving. Three or four minutes later the man returns having obviously been to the toilet.
I ask Figuera what he thinks will happen to the men caught with the boatload of hash. ‘Oh, they’ll probably either plead guilty if they are Spanish, serve a short sentence and then go back into the world of hash, I guess. Or if any of them are foreign, they’ll probably be refused bail until they come up with a surety of at least fifteen thousand euros. Then they hand that over in exchange for their passports and no doubt they will leave the country within hours of their release.’
From my previous encounters with the Spanish authorities, I knew only too well that they believed it was cheaper for their judicial and prison system for foreigners suspected of drug crimes to pay a hefty surety before they are released on bail and then encouraged to immediately leave the country and never return. I know of three British drug smugglers who each had to pay €15,000 to get bail and then left the country.
One Guardia Civil officer admits: ‘It saves Spain’s courts and prisons so much money and we rid ourselves of them from this country for ever. It makes complete sense. Spain is in the middle of a huge recession. Why would we want to waste our money keeping foreigners in our prisoners and paying for them to have lawyers in court?’
CHAPTER 22
DETECTIVE MO
Moroccan police are notoriously slippery and their connections to drug-smuggling gangs have been well documented in the past. So it was with some trepidation and not a whole load of trust, I arranged to meet a recently retired Tangier detective called Mo in one of the port city’s biggest cafes.
Hash gangsters and the police have close connections in these parts. It was similar to the way that in the 1970s, London’s Flying Squad of elite detectives courted some of the capital’s most notorious robbers and ended up in a sea of corruption and bribery that still reverberates in the UK’s capital city to this day.
Mo the ex-detective turns out to be a very friendly character, who immediately admitted to me he’d been thrown out of the police force after being accused of accepting a bribe. He made it sound as normal as directing traffic. But Mo insisted he’d been framed by his colleagues after having an affair with his boss’s wife.
‘Things work very differently here in Morocco from London. The police are poorly paid. They have old equipment. Even the computers are fifteen or twenty years old and we never have any proper time to devote to solving crimes. If a murder occurs here in Tangier, our bosses give us a couple of days on the case and then insist we give up and move onto other stuff.’
I’d earlier heard from the two hash middlemen Leff and Fara that Mo had previously been stationed in Ketama, the notorious ‘gateway’ to the hash communities of the Rif Mountains. Mo shook his head as he recalled his time in Ketama. ‘Ah yes, Ketama. That was not a good time for me because the hash gangsters did not like me being in their town.’
Mo believes he was sent to work in Ketama by a group of renegade detectives who wanted him ‘out of the way’ after he stumbled on a huge drugs racket inside the Tangier detectives’ bureau. ‘I guess they hoped I’d get killed by the drug barons,’ he says with a wry smile.
He admits that during his three-month stay in Ketama, he was threatened ‘many times’ with death if he tried to stop any of the hash farms from operating in the mountains near by. ‘I am a realist and if a hash gangster tells you to keep away from them in a place like Ketama you do as they ask, otherwise they slit your throat.’
Mo is convinced, like so many Moroccans I spoke to, that Ketama and the surrounding Rif mountains will ‘stay independent as long as it produces hash’. He explains: ‘Hash is the lifeblood for the people in the Rif Mountains. When I turned up in Ketama they could have easily killed me, thrown my corpse into a valley and let the wolves feed on my carcass. But they are clever. They let me stay there but they made sure that anything I tried to do they would know about. If I called in a unit of police from Tangier they’d find out before I’d finished making the phone call. I had people following me around the town. They even put someone outside my rented apartment at night just to make sure I didn’t try and slip away.
‘I worked there with two hands tied behind my back. It’s just the way it is there but I learned a lot about the Berber people. They are proud and secretive but they are also very clever and well organised. They know they have their own “kingdom” up there in the mountains and they want to keep it that way.’
Mo continues: ‘I was considered a real high flyer in the force until I had some problems with the wife of my boss. I had the ear of the chief of police and I was often handpicked for difficult investigations but I guess I got overconfident. I thought I was invincible at work and with women. I pushed my luck too far but that doesn’t make me a bad person or a bad cop.’
But what about the relationship between the hash criminals and the police? How close is it really? Mo hesitates for a few seconds while carefully considering his answer: ‘There is no point in pretending that few of the police here in Morocco are corrupt. It’s the only way many of them can make enough money to support their families. The bosses know what is going on but most of the time they turn a blind eye because they know how badly paid police officers on the ground are.
‘The trouble is that everyone knows you can make a fortune from hash. No one, even the King himself, would ever do anything to endanger that business. It’s vital to the economy. That’s why the Berbers are left to run their own region. No one wants to do anything that will slow down the hash business because that would mean putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. It would be a disaster for this country.’
Mo blames a lot of the problems connected to hash on foreign gangsters trying to set up their smuggling rings inside Morocco.
‘Foreigners come here and try to take our income. We cannot allow it. They must understand and respect this country and not try to take things over.’
I recalled how Si, my British ‘guide’ in the Rif region, told me that at least half a dozen Dutch and Brits had been killed in recent years in the mountains after trying to set up their own hash supply chain directly into Europe.
‘You need to understand just how powerful the hash gangsters are,’ Mo said.
‘They run the local government in the Ketama and the Rif region. They own all the big businesses and the locals know that without them they would be starving and destitute.’
He was starting to sound like some kind of public relations expert working on behalf of the hash barons.
‘Sure, I know these guys. I’ve been to eat at their homes. I know what they are doing but as long as they remain the big employers in the area they will be untouchable. They are much more clever than the straight politicians. They know how to keep the people on their side.’
Mo’s voice lowered as he told me of one gang of Spanish criminals who were attacked and killed by Berber hash barons when they turned up in Ketama ten years earlier. ‘Everyone in Ketama talks about it. The Berber drug lords heard about the Spaniards within hours of their arrival. They sent a team round to the hostel where the Spaniards were staying and herded them into two trucks and drove them into the mountains. They were never seen again.’
As Mo the ex-cop spoke to me he became more and more animated and loud. It was only then I noticed that his nose was running and he seemed very edgy. When he went to the toilet for the third time in under an hour, I concluded that Mo was probably snorting cocaine.
As a result, the topics of conversation jumped around like a starling on heat. Suddenly out of nowhere, he begins talking about how he often smoked hash himself. ‘Listen, there is nothing bad about hash. It helps people relax. I think a lot more people should smoke it then the world might be a happier place. When I was in the police, we used to all enjoy a joint or a pipe at the end of the day to unwind. Mind you, the hash we used was top grade because it had been confiscated from drug smugglers!’
Then Mo made a chilling revelation about my movements in Morocco. ‘I know exactly where you have been throughout your trip here. The police were asked to keep an eye on you as they are with many writers or journalists. We Moroccans do not want negative things written about us.’
So, I asked, did he want hash to be made legal?
‘Now that is a good question. I think it’s better it stays like this because if big corporations got involved then a lot of those poor people up in the Rif Mountains would be out of work. Hash is engrained in their souls. It is part of their culture. Nobody in Ketama, for example, feels that hash is a criminal industry. It is looked on as being the lifeblood of the region.’
I then asked if Mo thought the King of Morocco himself was a hash smoker. He laughed. ‘No way. He is too serious and careful to use hash but sometimes I think he’d be a lot more chilled out if he did smoke it.’
The most awkward moment of the interview came towards the end when Mo got quite agitated when I tried to change the subject after he unsubtly suggested I might pay him for the interview. I tried to ignore him but his coke-fuelled brain wouldn’t let go that easily. I explained that the budget for my book didn’t stretch to paying for interviews.
‘You know, my friend,’ said Mo, sounding much more tense than at any other time during our meeting. ‘You people come here and try to insult our country and then you don’t even appreciate that our time costs money.’
He said nothing more. Got up, nodded vaguely in my direction and left the cafe very quickly.
It was lucky he left that golden question until the end because I have no doubt he would have walked out much earlier if he knew I didn’t have a bribe to pay him.
CHAPTER 23
UK LAW ENFORCEMENT
Britain’s Royal Navy comes into contact with so many smugglers during patrols of the Strait of Gibraltar that they have dubbed this strip of water the ‘Hashish Highway’ because they reckon that 70 per cent of the world’s hash travels across these waters each year. The navy spends more time boarding suspected drug smugglers’ boats than protecting the waters around Gibraltar from maritime intruders. Stopping drugs reaching British shores – or any shores for that matter – has become a key mission for the Royal Navy and its subsidiaries the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and Fleet Air Arm in recent years.
At any one time, a navy destroyer and frigate are stationed in Gibraltar from where regular patrols of the North Atlantic are carried out, as well as numerous stop and search operations in the British waters off the Rock. Hash traffickers in the area are renowned for often using what are known in the drugs trade as ‘go fasts’ – inflatable speedboats packed with petrol and drugs – to try and outrun the authorities.
The Gibraltar government’s own Police Marine Section (RGPMS) also patrol the same waters in co-ordination with the Royal Navy. They operate two purpose-built patrol boats, considered crucial for patrolling the shallower waters close to the Rock. These new smaller vessels play a key role in combating crime and drug trafficking in Gibraltar waters.
One of the RGPMS vessels is an all-weather interceptor powered by four outboard engines and fitted with a fully enclosed cabin. The second boat does not have an enclosed cockpit but a hard canopy to protect the crew from the elements. Both 13-metre vessels are equipped with numerous safety features – including hydraulic suspension on crew seats – and are capable of navigating at high speed in rough seas.
But the RN and Gibraltarians are incredibly sensitive to stories about the Rock’s connection to drugs and crime. One Gibraltarian vet explains: ‘The Rock is still a hotbed for dodgy criminals and drug smugglers but the Gib government doesn’t want to encourage anyone to say that in public so they play down the drug smuggling.’
So I turned to the UK mainland for the real story about how Britain is taking on the secret world of hash.
*
In Britain it is the job of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to try and stem the tide of hash coming into the country. The agency was formed on 1 April 2008 by a merger of Britain’s Border and Immigration Agency (BIA), UK Visas and the Detection functions of HM Revenue and Customs. The decision to create a single border control organisation was taken in a bid to tighten Britain’s borders to prevent smuggled goods, such as drugs – including hash – from entering the country.
The UK Border Agency’s staff of 23,000 people is located in over 130 countries. Overseas staff vet visa applications and operate an intelligence and liaison network, acting as the first layer of border control for the UK. But the agency’s main role is to investigate all aspects of drug smuggling by developing a single primary border control line at the UK border monitoring all people and goods entering the country. With a budget of £2.2 billion the UK Border Agency certainly has the funds available to be an effective force in the battle against hash smugglers.
But most of the British hash gangsters I have spoken to for this book claimed that despite their public pledges to the contrary, the agency has done little to stem the flow of hash into the UK, although the UKBC would no doubt disagree and they have certainly been trying to publicise their so-called ‘crackdown’ on hash in recent years.
Unlike their Spanish counterparts the Guardia Civil, the UK Border Control (UKBC) were extremely reluctant to help me with my research for this project. It was frustrating because the UKBC’s efforts to catch hash smugglers had led to a number of very dramatic high-profile arrests in recent years and I wanted to hear directly from the men and women who claimed they were cracking down on the hash smugglers, as well as those dealing in more dangerous Class A substances.
Eventually I traced an old contact who’d been one of the top officials in the drugs investigation arm of the UK Customs and Excise before it was absorbed into UK Border Control. Part of his job had been to travel the world uncovering hash supply routes from places as far afield as Afghanistan and Tibet. He turned out to be a mine of information. We shall call him ‘Robert’ here to protect his identity since he still works undercover on a freelance basis for the UKBC and a number of other forces around the world.
Robert explains: ‘There has been this tendency in recent years for nations to pull back from cracking down on hash in favour of concentrating on heavier drugs but in the UK we always believed that hash was an inevitable precursor to those more
serious drugs and their associated addictions. Hash may not be as harmful in itself but the profits for smuggling it for the criminals are vast and I believe that many of those same smugglers also carry A-class narcotics.’
Robert continues: ‘I know it may sound a tad old fashioned, but we believed and still do as far as I am aware, that hash is definitely worth our attention. It’s helping feed a huge section of the underworld and it needs to be dealt with seriously and efficiently. Our partners in Europe and beyond are, quite frankly, useless. They are just not prepared to prioritise it. There have been many times when I’ve tried to discuss this with our alleged partners in the fight against drugs and realised everything I was saying was falling on deaf ears.’
He says that in his day dealing with the authorities in many of the Narco States such as Afghanistan, Morocco and Mexico was a ‘nightmare’. ‘I’d fly out to these place with appointments to see police chiefs and they wouldn’t even turn up for meetings. I knew a lot of them were corrupt but you’d think they would at least go through the motions, surely?’
One time Robert tracked a major UK criminal’s articulated lorry when it travelled across Europe into Turkey, where it picked up a shipment of hash, which had originally come from Afghanistan. Robert says: ‘The idea was to make sure all the hash was on board and then track the lorry as it travelled back through Europe until it turned up at Dover. Trouble was that most of the countries it was going to travel through were riddled with corrupt police, so we decided we couldn’t even inform them of our plans in case the cannabis smugglers got wind of what was happening. We just crossed our fingers and hoped the lorry would get to the UK eventually.’
Robert says that for the following ten days, his team continued shadowing the truck and then raided the vehicle within minutes of it driving off a ferry ramp in Dover.
‘But it could easily have ended in disaster and I hated the attitude of all those different countries. No wonder criminals think that hash smuggling is a “safe” option compared with dealing in cocaine.’
Hash Page 18