Police gangster boss of a Romanian crime syndicate arrested in Barcelona

internal affairs division of the Autonomous Police yesterday arrested at dawn two security agents of the Montjuïc Sants station in Barcelona. The investigation against the two policemen, who head of the department of number 22 of Barcelona, was launched six months ago when one of the defendants was heard in a telephone conversation with a Romanian crime syndicate operating primarily in the subways. The
investigation determined that the agent of 25 years had control of the gang. The two policeman were arrested at three in the morning along with five other members of the criminalgang. One of the internal affairs officers found at one of the policemans home gun's with serial numbers removed, an electric truncheon (tazar), a significant amount of cocaine and a lesser amount, hashish. Also seized were objects such as - jewelry, televisions, cameras, mobile phones etc, as well as documentation from other theft victims. The two police officers last night were held in separate cells at the Les Corts. They will today be questioned and when they will very shortly appear before a court. The investigation began six months ago. The investigating officers of the regional area were following a group of Romanian theives. After hearing one of the gang members in converstion during an intercepted call with
one of the arrested parties, the case was then passed to Internal affairs. The accused officer in question, was then assigned to a group of plainclothes policeman in Sant Marti that is dedicated to the fight against repeating offenders.
The monitored calls then showed that the agent had become the leader of the criminals. Part of the crimes committed was that of money being taken from stolen credit cards. He was also found to be philandering with a drug dealer in his home that he shared with his Romanian girl, police found a bag of cocaine and a set of scales. The other accused officer of 32 years of age, has been found to have had a lesser involvement. The internal affairs division are continuing with their enquiries and have also found two other offenders who have been involved with stealing. The two detainees are the latest developments and the investigation continues.

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Spanish property developer said Tuesday it will hold a raffle to unload 31 apartments near Barcelona

Spanish property developer said Tuesday it will hold a raffle to unload 31 apartments near Spanish property developer said Tuesday it will hold a raffle to unload 31 apartments near Barcelona which have been difficult to sell amid a collapse in the real estate market.Tickets for the raffle cost 50 euros (63 dollars) and they will go on sale on Wednesday, a spokesman for developer Grupo de Empresas Rob told AFP.The company hopes to sell 7,000 raffle tickets for each apartment which will be awarded, meaning it would raise 350,000 euros per dwelling.If the developer does not sell at least 6,500 tickets for a particular apartment, the raffle will not go ahead for that property and participants will receive a refund.The raffle, which will be supervised by a notary, will be held in the coming months, the spokesman said.
All of the apartments -- which are between 50 and 90-square metres (970-square feet) -- are all located on the same street in the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma de Gramenet.After a decade-long boom, Spain's property market began to slump last year due to rising interest rates, oversupply and tougher lending conditions introduced in the wake of the global credit crunch.Property sales declined 28.2 percent during the first nine months of this year compared with the same period of 2007, national statistics institute INE said last week.The drop in sales has led developers to come up with innovative promotions to try to sell properties.In October another Spanish developer, Salsa Immobiliaria, offered a one bedroom apartment to anyone who bought one of its four-bedroom townhouses near the beach in Terrazas de Miraflores on the Costa del Sol.In May a man who could not meet mortgage payments on his apartment near Madrid tried to organise a raffle to unload it but he had to call off the contest because he failed to get the proper authorisation.

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Mario Santafede, was arrested in Barcelona

An alleged member of the Camorra mafia based in Naples, 55 year old Mario Santafede, was arrested in Barcelona in a joint operation between Spanish and Italian police.
The man has been hiding in Spain for some years and has allegedly been directing drug running operations from Latin America from here. Cocaine runs from Colombia and Ecuador have been at the centre of his operations.He has now been handed over to the National Court in Madrid where he will appear shortly, probably facing extradition to Italy where he is on the list of the country’s most-wanted.Mario Santafede member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia detained in the car park of a luxury apartment in the northeastern city of Barcelona

A mafia suspect on the list of 100 most wanted fugitives in Italy has been arrested in Barcelona, Italian police said today.

Mario Santafede, 55, a member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, was picked up in a joint raid carried out by Italian and Spanish police on a flat in a residential area of the city.Santafede, who is the object of an international arrest warrant, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in his absence for criminal association in connection with drug trafficking. He has been on the run since 2004.Spanish police working in cooperation with their Italian counterparts have arrested a suspected leader of Italy’s Camorra crime syndicate, the Interior Ministry said Saturday.Members of Spain’s elite special operations police moved in to detain Mario Santafede in the car park of a luxury apartment in the northeastern city of Barcelona on Friday evening, the ministry said in a statement.Santafede, 55, is wanted by Italian authorities for suspected cocaine smuggling from Colombia and Ecuador to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy, the ministry said.
The suspect, who is thought by investigators to have close links with other Naples-based criminals, is also wanted in connection with at least three murders, the ministry said.Santafede, who was in possession of false Italian and British identity papers when arrested, had changed his appearance through exercise, the ministry said.
The suspect was expected to appear before a judge at the National Court in Madrid later Saturday prior to possible extradition to Italy, the ministry said.
Santafede is one several suspected Camorra leaders arrested in or near Barcelona in recent years. Police arrested Patrizio Bosti, who was on Italy’s list of 30 most-wanted criminals, while having dinner in Girona last month. Bosti, 49, had been on the run since 2005.
In February 2006, Raffaele Petrazzuolo was picked up in Barcelona and deported to Italy on suspicion of criminal activity and complicity with mob leaders.Also in 2006 a man identified only as Carmine R., 38, was detained in the seaside resort of Sitges, just outside Barcelona.

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Roshan Jamal Khan detained in Spain

Roshan Jamal Khan was detained in Spain on January 19 and kept in jail since, accused of being an Al Qaeda-linked suicide bomber. Spain has not explained his crime. This despite the Indian Ministry of External Affairs writing to Spain in March first week that Roshan was “clean”.From her, it is difficult to get the story of how the ex-student of south Mumbai’s cosmopolitan St Xavier’s College, popular as a boxer, went on to be an olive trader before being picked up from a mosque in Barcelona and branded a terrorist.“I fear of repercussions on the children. The family name is at stake. Only my two eldest children know about his arrest. The four younger ones — between seven and 12 — don’t know,” she said.
And as Roshan goes about his routine in a Spanish jail 7,000 km away, his 16-year-old son Talha will be writing his SSC Physics exam on Monday.“My exams are near, but I’ll manage. I’m worried about Talha,” said teary-eyed 17-year-old Safiya, a first-year commerce student. “He’s upset. He wants to hear father’s voice.”The government, meanwhile, ran its cold, officious lines. “The embassy was given consular access to Roshan Jamal Khan, and two officials from the Indian embassy in Madrid went to meet this gentleman in prison,” said a senior Indian diplomat in Spain. “They have confirmed that he is indeed an Indian and is in good health.”
A Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson in Delhi just said: “We are in touch with the Spanish authorities.”
Meanwhile, brother Mehboob Khan shows some of Roshan’s certificates. “Shri Khan comes from a respectable family and... bears a good moral character,” says a certificate issued by Professor AA Kazi, St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, on November 7, 1981.A letter of appreciation issued by the American Embassy in Kuwait in 1994 reads: “Your professionalism and willingness to provide assistance... is sincerely appreciated.” (This was in connection with services Roshan Khan provided while with a Kuwait-based aviation company).Roshan’s younger brother Mehboob Khan, a BJP worker for 25 years, says he called Roshan two days after he was detained on January 19 in Madrid.“His cell was switched off and it continued being so for the rest of the week. I got worried and called his brother-in-law in Barcelona. He told us about the charges. Till then neither the Spanish authorities nor our authorities informed us,” Mehboob recalled. “I then started corresponding with the Ministry of External Affairs and the PMO, which told me they are looking into the matter. I offered to go to Spain but was told it was not required at this stage.”More than a month after Jamal’s detention, the family received a letter (dated February 25) from Sujata Mehta, Ambassador of India in Madrid, stating that two officials had met Roshan and he was being looked after well and that he had asked them to inform his family members in this regard. He also conveyed a message that “his family should await a resolution of the situation”.“That is what we are doing: waiting,” said Mehboob. Mehboob is preparing to go to Spain. “I have requested the embassy to help me with a visa. I will go to fight for my brother,” he said.Their father, Babu Peshgar Khan, who runs a dairy in south Mumbai, is in shock and refused to speak.

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Terrorist threat in Southern Spain (update)

Spain’s Pakistani community has grown from a few thousand residents a decade ago to about 70,000 today, as immigrants have been drawn to Spain by easy entry and to Barcelona’s Raval district by cheap rents. They have injected new life into the decrepit neighborhood, opening small businesses, but law enforcement officials say some have engaged in petty crimes like money laundering and credit card fraud.Pakistanis have also sent home millions of dollars through the informal system of money transfers, some of it financing extremist groups there, the officials add.
As the terrorism suspects congregated in the largely Pakistani neighborhood here over the past few months, they were joined by a young man who called himself Asim. He had come from the Pakistani borderlands where the leadership of Al Qaeda is said to have regrouped.
The suspects, he later told Spanish investigators, envisioned a wave of spectacular attacks: Coordinated suicide bombings would start in this city’s vast subway system and then sweep through Portugal, Germany, France and Britain if certain demands were not met.
Asim had been sent to Spain to be a suicide bomber, but he also was an informant for French intelligence working in the no man’s land of Waziristan in Pakistan. After he got word to his handlers of an impending attack, Spain’s military police swooped into the neighborhood of Raval in the early hours of Jan. 19 and arrested 14 men. Now the officials unraveling the case say it demonstrates the growing threat of terrorist activities migrating to Continental Europe from Pakistan.
The largely Pakistani cell formed quickly in Barcelona with support, and perhaps direction, from the tribal areas of Pakistan, the authorities said. According to the arrest warrant in the case, three suicide bombing suspects arrived in Spain within the last four months and the bomb making suspect had recently spent five months in Pakistan.

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