The largest trial in recent decades against Strait drug traffickers has already been sentenced.
Antonio Tejón,
Castaña
, one of the biggest traffickers in the south along with his brother Isco, has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for the crimes of drug trafficking and membership in a criminal organization.
The Seventh Section of the Provincial Court of Cádiz based in Algeciras has sentenced 97 of the 144 defendants who were awaiting resolution in a trial of such enormous proportions that it forced work to be carried out in the room in which they were held. the hearings from April of last year, until last July 18, at which time it was heard for sentencing.
Up to 157 people were initially called to the trial, accused of belonging to a hashish drug trafficking network based in Campo de Gibraltar and which branched out to the coasts of Huelva.
All of them ended up arrested in Operation Dismantle, one of the largest raids carried out by Ocon Sur, the Civil Guard command created to fight against drug trafficking in the Strait.
In the first session of the trial, held on April 10 of last year, the case was lightened after the accusation was withdrawn for 20 people due to lack of evidence and 62 conformity agreements were signed.
The oral hearings continued for 68 investigated, seven of them with wanted warrants for not showing up.
Sentence 14/2024, to which EL PAÍS has had access, details in more than 586 pages how Tejón and his men were organized as a group to “introduce large quantities of hashish from Morocco for subsequent distribution to third parties” on board up to five unregistered boats – known as narcolanchas – valued at more than “50,000 euros.”
Later, on land, they loaded the hashish into SUVs, some of them stolen, and transported them to the drug depots, “for their subsequent departure and final distribution.”
“To carry out this activity they had an extensive infrastructure of material means,” the statement details in its proven facts, which ranged from warehouses to hide the drug boats, machinery for their preparation, tractors for their transfer or cargo vehicles.
“The personal infrastructure” was equally extensive, to the point of covering any of the needs that Antonio Tejón and his people had to carry out their stashes.
It was the classic organization of a Strait mafia, but elevated to total control of each of the steps of the process, to the extreme of enjoying "absolute capacity to obtain the necessary people for each phase or moment", as they point out in their the three magistrates presided over by Nieves Marina sentence.
This included the preparation and launching of boats, the supply of gasoline and supplies - known in slang as
petaqueo
-, the pilots, the crew at sea, the points - which reported the presence of police on the coast - and the ground personnel who are responsible for unloading the substance and moving it.
The sentence considers Tejón, the youngest of the Castaña brothers, known among their people as “the kings of hashish”, as the leader of the gang and hence condemns him for aggravated drug trafficking of notorious importance and for recidivism to the penalty of five years and two fines of one million euros.
For the crime of criminal organization, the Court sentences Castaña to one year and six months in prison, although it acquits him of the crime of reception and the crime of smuggling for which he was also accused.
The sentence is less than half of the 15 and a half years that the Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office initially requested.
However, sources close to the public ministry have shown their satisfaction with the broad scope of the sentences, after up to 97 defendants have been convicted, to whom variable sentences ranging from six to two years have been imposed.
In addition, 47 more suspects have been acquitted of the charges against them.
For the magistrates of the Court, the youngest of the Tejón brothers "holds a main or management position", along with another of the condemned, Alejandro CJ. Just below them, there also appear up to two more lieutenants, Óscar RF and José Antonio CF, who have been located meeting with Tejón and coordinating activities.
“The illicit activity carried out by such people in the period examined is continuous, incessant,” notes the ruling, which stops to analyze the activity that the gang carried out in 2020, at which time the police cordon established by the Ministry of Interior had already been in effect for almost two years.
The Court of Cádiz considers it proven that this enormous activity made various caches viable that took advantage of different points of the Andalusian coast to carry out their activity, many of them directed by Tejón and Alejandro from a distance through an incessant activity of meetings, documented by the agents and reflected in the document.
In fact, although the ruling establishes that during the first months of the year most of the illegal hashish trafficking activities took place along the coasts of Campo de Gibraltar - with specific logistical support in other provinces such as Seville - it also confirms that Starting in June, “parallel events occurred in the Huelva area,” driven by the police pressure that existed in the Strait area.
This new stash point was possible after Tejón and his men established a relationship with a group from Huelva that operated from the coasts of Isla Cristina.
The various searches and seizures of the gang led the Civil Guard to recover 6,673,563 kilograms of hashish - which were valued at 13,220,328 euros - in the first half of that year, according to the statement.
Added to this is the enormous amount of real estate that Tejón had, despite the fact that he claimed not to have a stable job: a chalet, a home in the Malaga town of Marbella, another in Sotogrande (San Roque, Cádiz, of which his partner paid more than 10,000 euros in rent for half a year) and another in Fuengirola (Málaga).
“The vague explanations offered by the accused (…) show the personal use by Antonio Tejón Carrasco of a series of properties, which does not correlate with his economic income, nor with his work or professional activity, and which we understand implies “one more indication of his dedication to the illicit activity attributed to him,” the sentence states.
Antonio's older brother, Isco Tejón, was not investigated in this case, who in a previous trial for drug trafficking managed to escape the bulk of the crimes for which he was investigated and ended up sentenced to just three years and one month for possession of a small amount of hashish in his house.
But the procedural fate of Antonio - who has already been in prison several times - is different, increasingly tangled.
This new sentence, which can be appealed within a maximum period of 10 days, is in addition to two from 2014 for crimes against public health and two more from 2020 for attacks against law enforcement agents.
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