The judge of the National Court Francisco de Jorge proposed to judge by a attack crime with the use of dangerous means and two offences of Seven suspected tobacco traffickers injured that on February 2, 2023, they stoned two customs surveillance service officers who were pursuing them as part of a police operation against tobacco smuggling, events that occurred in a Gibraltar beach.
The officials, insulted and threatened by the smugglers, had to proceed to deterrent fire and the Gibraltar authorities protested. They accused customs of violating their sovereignty and jurisdiction.
In his order to move to an abbreviated procedure, collected by Europa Press, the president of the court reports that in the early hours of February 2 there was a police intervention in the La Atunara Beach on the Concepción Linein the province of Cadiz, where new people have been arrested for the crime of tobacco smuggling.
While some of the tobacco was seized on land, another boat with three crew members and also carrying a considerable quantity of tobacco He was unable to disembark because of persecution. police.
A patrol boat and an auxiliary boat Customs Surveillance Service, The latter, with two agents on board, began a chase against the people being investigated who ignored the agents’ requests and They set sail for Gibraltarthrowing the tobacco bales into the sea.
The judge explains that the three alleged tobacco traffickers fled to Levante beach. Unfortunately, the judge adds, “the the auxiliary boat that was pursuing them broke downhis engine stopped, causing the current to carry him to the same beach.”
It was at this point that the smugglers attacked the agents “with the intention of injuring them,” by throwing big stones at them and, although they knew that the tobacco aforesaid had been seized and was on board a Spanish vessel, they went on board and appropriated the bales recovered.
The order states that the two officers suffered different degrees of suffering injuries and fractures Therefore, the facts fall, without prejudice to a subsequent classification, under the offence of attack with the use of dangerous means and under two offences of injury.
The magistrate transfers the prosecutor and the charges to the prosecutor so that within 10 days request the opening of an oral trial or, where appropriate, the filing without further action.
