A drug trafficker who rammed two police vehicles during a chase sentenced to 13 years in prison

The Provincial Court of Malaga has sentenced a drug trafficker to 13 years in prison who rammed two National Police vehicles in 2021 during a chase at 160 kilometers per hour on the A-45 highway.

The officers stopped him because they suspected that he was driving a van loaded with hashish, but the man fled at full speed and one of his cronies ended up attacking two police vehicles.

One of the police vehicles overturned and its driver ended up in the ICU.

Two other members of the organization have been sentenced to two years in prison and two others could not be tried because their whereabouts are unknown.

The sentence comes just when numerous police organizations are crying out about the lack of means to combat drug trafficking in Campo de Gibraltar - and, by extension, on the Costa del Sol - and denouncing the increase in dangerousness and violence on the part of drug traffickers after that two civil guards died after their zodiac was hit by a 14-meter drug boat in Barbate.

Police sources insist that drug traffickers are increasingly armed and that, in addition, they feel they have impunity when ramming police vehicles during chases.

Not only at sea, also on the road.

“They try to kick us out, run us over… and they don't think about it.

They do whatever it takes to avoid being arrested and losing their charge,” says a national police officer.

“When they are on their way with a car full of bundles, they take whatever it takes.

They have lost their fear of everything,” insists another agent who works on the Costa del Sol. The Jupol union, the majority in the National Police, claims to have been “for years denouncing the situation of insecurity that agents face every day.” and they criticize the “flagrant shortage of material and human resources to confront growing, increasingly violent crime.”

Vehicle overturned in Malaga in 2021.

The perpetrator of the events prosecuted on the Costa del Sol, Abdelhammid Tifour, has been found guilty of the crimes of attack against law enforcement officers with a motor vehicle, attempted homicide and injuries, as well as integration of a criminal group, falsehood of an official document and against public health.

The agents, who were following a van within the

Esmeralda Capitana

anti-drug trafficking operation , were traveling in two camouflaged cars and decided to stop the driver when he approached the control cabin of the AP-7 highway in the section that connects the capital of Malaga with Antequera.

According to the sentence, the suspect did not heed the signs and began to flee: he broke the barrier and accelerated.

He then began a chase that later extended along the A-45 highway towards Córdoba.

There, two new suspicious vehicles were placed in front of the police cars to prevent their passage and hinder their progress, “putting the officers involved at serious risk,” according to the court, while the van accelerated and braked dangerously.

It was a situation “with a lot of adrenaline,” as the agents explained in the fall of 2022, when they received the Police Merit Cross with a red badge, the highest police distinction, for their performance in the drug trafficking operation.

“You don't have time to think, only to act,” they confessed at the event, reported by the newspaper

Málaga today

.

The chase continued for 40 kilometers, until at the height of the Cordoban municipality of Monturque, Abdelhammid Tifour, decided to attack the police vehicles "with the purpose of undermining the bodily integrity of the police officers and without ruling out the result of death," since who were traveling at 160 kilometers per hour, according to proven facts.

One of the agents suffered several minor injuries, but the second was admitted to the ICU of the Córdoba hospital with numerous injuries to his arms, legs, face and shoulders, for which he underwent various surgical operations.

In December of that year, two of those investigated were arrested in Seville and a third in Manilva, although just over a kilo of hashish was seized from them.

Two other people were also arrested on the Costa del Sol, but have been declared in absentia.

The slightly injured agent will receive compensation of 510 euros and for the more seriously injured, compensation of 34,000 euros has been set.

The General Directorate of Police must receive 14,000 euros for the damage to the cars.

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