London, May 26 (IANS/EFE) At least 32 people have been arrested in an anti-drug and anti-trafficking operation across Europe conducted by 750 police officials from Europol, the European Union’s criminal intelligence agency.
Twenty people were arrested in Spain and 12 in Britain Tuesday, in a joint operation in London and Spain’s Costa del Sol. The operation also included house searches in the Ireland capital Dublin as well as in Belgium and Cyprus, and was carried out jointly by Ireland’s An Garda Siochana police, the Spanish National Police, SOCA and the Belgian police.
A 53-year-old Irish-born British gangster Christopher ‘Christy’ Kinahan was arrested Tuesday at his mansion in Costa del Sol, Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) said Tuesday.
Kinahan was arrested by the Spanish National Police along with several of his family members, a number of British and Irish citizens and four Spanish attorneys, SOCA said.
In a statement released in Warsaw, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Kinahan’s organisation is connected to several crimes including murder, drug and human trafficking.
Rubalcaba said the trans-European operation showed that ‘political cooperation works’.
‘The scale of this joint operation by law enforcement agencies from so many countries is an indication of how prolific we think this network was,’ SOCA director Trevor Pearce said.
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