No hiding place for British criminals

Wednesday, 11 January 2012 12:12

Written by Editor

For more than a year now, the National Police have been trying to convince foreign criminals that the Costa del Sol is no longer an ideal hiding place for them. Since November 2010, the police have set up more than half a dozen control points to harass them. Police watch an urbanisation for several days to locate specific characters then make sure they know they're being watched when they leave their homes for any reason.

A spokesman for the Costa del Sol Unit against Drugs and Organised Crime (Udyco) told a local paper: “They have got to learn that they can't go out to buy a loaf of bread, like any law-abiding citizen, that they're not going to be able to spend their ill-gotten gains in peace here on the Costa.”

The police focus specifically on British criminals who are more easily identified because of their habit of meeting in the same places. The operation began after the police detected the presence of a group of Irishmen with links to Mafia groups in Torremolinos and Benalmadena. This followed the shooting of Irish tourist John O'Neill, aged 40, after he'd had an argument in a Benalmadena pub over the use of the toilet.

In the past four years, the Costa del Sol has been the favourite refuge for Irish criminals, especially those who have fallen out with the drug bosses back home, the Udyca spokesman said. “They have formed their own drug trafficking networks in Malaga and made contact with the Moroccan traffickers.”
But the police have had a fair measure of success in combating them. Between January 2010 and October 2011, they arrested 117 Irishmen along the Costa in connection with a variety of crimes.

The Udyca spokesman said the police made sure their activities didn't annoy Britons who are on holiday or live on the Costa. In fact there has been increasing collaborastion between them and the police, thanks to the CrimeStoppers campaigns. “They know they can report a compatriot they suspect of being a criminal anonymously and that by doing so they improve life here for themselves, families and friends.”

To this end, the police have set up the email address This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to enable foreigners to make anonymous reports.
A good example of this increased collaboration is that just hours after CrimeStoppers launched its last campaign in October last year, a woman in Mijas told police that the bald unshaven man she'd seen on a programme on British TV was her neighbour. As a result, police were able to arrest Dominic Steven Powell, a 48-year-old Welshman wanted in Britain on paedophile charges.