Agents of the Civil Guard accompany a detainee during one of the searches carried out on Shield Street in the San García neighborhood in Algeciras (Cádiz), within the framework of a macroperation in which thirty people have been arrested against a network of drug traffickers led by Jesús Heredia, el Pantoja, who has also been arrestedA.Carrasco Ragel (EFE)
The narco Jesús Heredia, alias
Pantoja
, it was always more about introducing large amounts of hashish along the coast closest to the Strait of Gibraltar, until now, which seems to have taken a liking to Chiclana de la Frontera, closer to Cádiz.
In June 2020 he was arrested while having lunch at an Italian restaurant in this town, despite the search warrant that had been weighing on him for a month.
Now, after spending time in provisional prison and paying bail that set him free, he has been arrested again for his alleged entanglements with a mafia that moved between Chiclana and Barbate, specialized both in moving drugs and in their related logistics.
This new police problem is added to the at least two court cases that he has pending, one of them, with a trial date that has been postponed up to two times.
The Pantoja is, from the first hour of this Wednesday, one of the thirty detainees that add the operation of the Civil Guard that has deployed 300 agents in the Cadiz region of La Janda.
Investigators from Ocon Sur —the command created by the Armed Institute to fight drug trafficking in Andalusia— consider them to be part of a gang specialized in supplying fuel to powerful
drug traffickers.
who cross the Strait to Morocco to pick up the bales of drugs.
In addition, both in interventions from days past and in the 39 searches carried out in the last few hours —in the towns of Algeciras, Barbate, Vejer de la Frontera, Medina Sidonia and Chiclana— they have located some 3.7 tons of hashish.
That leads the civil guards to affirm that the gang was also experienced in moving drugs, supported by logistics made up of half a dozen boats, various electronic material and up to ten vehicles, assets now seized in the operation.
All mafia movements were supposedly coordinated by its main leader, JM, who has also been arrested by the Civil Guard.
It was with him that El Pantoja had a collaboration agreement that had been in operation for at least two years, according to sources in the investigation.
That is the period that Ocon Sur has been carrying out with its open investigations against the gang and against the well-known narco from Campogibraltareño.
The beginning of this period coincides with the heavy blow that the National Police and the Civil Guard inflicted on the El Pantoja gang in the so-called
Caniche/Rubio operation.
, culminated before the state of alarm was decreed due to the coronavirus crisis in March 2020. Despite that deployment that led to his arrest in June of that year, one of the investigators of this Wednesday's device assures that the narco "He has not ceased to be linked" to the drug trafficking business.
A source from the defense of El Pantoja have confirmed the arrest of their client —produced in Calle Escudo de Algeciras—, although they have assured that they do not know the reasons and the crimes for which they are investigating him.
That same expert is the one who advises him in the trial that led to the Caniche/Rubio operation and in which the Campo de Gibraltar Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office asks the drug trafficker for up to 13 years in prison and a fine of 12 million euros for charges ranging from belonging to a criminal organization to the crime against public health, including possession of weapons.
Despite being considered one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the area and having been on the lookout, El Pantoja was on the street awaiting trial, after paying the 30,000 euro bail they requested months ago.
Both Jesús Heredia and another 13 investigated, accused of belonging to his clan, will have to sit on the bench of the Algeciras Section of the Provincial Court of Cádiz in September of this year, if the trial is not postponed again.
This is what has already happened on two occasions, in September of last year, due to the resignation of a lawyer and in early February of this year due to a positive covid from another defense attorney.
Against El Pantoja there is, at least, another legal case, since he appears as being investigated in a case instructed by the National Court regarding a plot of hashish transportation on board fishing boats.
In it, the fishing boat Rúa Mar was supposedly involved,
Powerful drug launches and fishing boats, now fuel supplies and new stash areas: drug trafficker El Pantoja has always shown an apparent interest in diversifying his business in the most different ways possible.
Heredia made his first orders in hashish from the hands of the powerful brothers Antonio and Isco Tejón, known as
Los Castaña
and considered kings of hashish.
He has also been linked as a lieutenant of Abdellah El Haj Sadek el Membri, better known as
The Messi of hashish.
.
El Pantoja launched to be his own boss after one and the other began to have more and more problems with the Justice —the Castaña will sit on the bench in April for a cause of 2016 and El Haj has been on the run for years— .
Now he is the one cornered, until he ends up arrested again and again.