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Friday, 21st February 2025 at 15:14This page was last updated at 15:41h.
Here are the first pictures of the first narco-tunnel discovered in Spain. Guardia Civil was able to gain access to an underground gallery in Ceuta. The entrance was discovered on Wednesday, at noon. The Moroccan drug mafias have used it for years to smuggle huge quantities of hashish in the autonomous city. They then loaded the hashish onto vehicles and took them by ferry to mainland Spain.
According to this initial inspection, the infrastructure lies at a depth 12 metres deep and is “at minimum 50 metres in length”, with “several galleries on Spanish territory”, whose location and layout have not yet been revealed by the police.
According to Guardia Civil, the tunnel is an average 40 cm wide by 60 cm tall. However, these dimensions “variate depending on the region”. In the pictures distributed by the Ministry of Interior, you can see that the officers are required to crawl in some areas, while they can move around while crouching in others.
The tunnel access is located in a building abandoned in El Tarajal, a industrial estate near the border to the neighbouring country. The entrance to the tunnel was hidden behind a trapdoor, and was reached through a 12 metre deep cavity.
SUR was told by sources in the investigation that this infrastructure had been shared between various drug trafficking groups, who contributed to the construction of the underground tunnel “in a syndicated manner” over the last couple of years.
The tunnel – these same sources explained – is very similar to the ones that Mexican drug traffickers have been using to introduce drugs into the United States from cities such as Ciudad Juárez or Tijuana. The investigators said that, like the Mexican “narco-tunnels”, the tunnel in Ceuta, was made with heavy machinery. They believe the earth used to create the passage in Morocco was removed through the entrance.
Guardia Civil is of the opinion that this tunnel was used only to smuggle in drugs and not illegal immigrants as it has been on occasion at the US border.
Obsession
The security forces have been obsessed with finding this tunnel since 2023 when they began to notice that the number and types of motor vehicles destined for the mainland were being seized for hashish. The officials knew that due to the controls at legal border crossings, and the double fence, it was impossible to bring in such a large amount of drugs through these routes.
The tunnel was discovered in the third phase, of Operation Hades, which the Guardia Civil is waging in this North African city to combat drug networks and corrupt officers. Two Guardia Civil officials and Mohamed Ali Duas – a member of the Ceuta Assembly for the localist MDyC group – were arrested at the end of January.
Nevertheless, other institutions, including the Regional Centre for Analysis and Intelligence against Drug Trafficking (CRAIN), based at Seville, as well as the Central Operational Unit (UCO) are also involved in the investigation.
This long-term operation is being coordinated by the Central Court of Instruction No. The audiencia national 3 and the Special Anti-Drugs Prosecutor’s Office have arrested 14 people and seized 6,000 kilograms of hashish.
