A total of 760 weapons were seized and 80 people arrested in the last three years, in an international operation involving Europol and police forces from 10 countries, including Portugal, it was announced this Sunday.
The Spanish Civil Guard, quoted by the EFE agency, has announced that it is a joint investigation initiated three years ago, called Diana-Vizardlike, in which people linked to extremist groups, criminal organizations or youth gangs with numerous records have been arrested. police.
The operation is part of the fight against arms trafficking networks that feed criminal or terrorist organizations and began when agents of the Information Service of the Spanish Civil Guard and the British National Anti-Crime Agency (NCA) detected numerous criminals that ‘stored’ illegal weapons on the European market.
The detainees bought alarm or signal weapons online, in certified establishments, and then turned them into lethal weapons capable of firing live ammunition.
The weapons were obtained by people from different countries of the European Union, mostly British, using false identities, fictitious addresses or cloned virtual means of payment.
According to the Spanish Civil Guard, this type of weapon is especially worrying in countries like the United Kingdom, where modified weapons were used in violent acts, such as the 445 shootings with 23 deaths recorded in that country last year.
After detecting this practice, the Civil Guard Information Service followed up and analyzed almost 2,000 arms sales to foreigners over the years.
The results were reported to the European Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and to the police in the countries where the illegal buyers resided.
The information obtained during the three years of investigation gave rise to more than 20 European Investigation Orders and international letters rogatory with 540 international exchanges of information.
During this period, 150 searches were carried out in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Belgium and Romania, which led to the seizure of more than 760 firearms and the arrest of 80 people.
In addition to weapons, the raids also resulted in the seizure of ammunition, chemical precursors that can be used as explosives, detonators, silencers, or machines to handle and transform weapons.
According to the Civil Guard, many of the weapons were in the hands of dangerous criminals with extensive criminal records linked to organized crime, drug trafficking, violent robberies, youth gangs, extreme right-wing groups or sexual offenders.
Of the 760 weapons seized, 703 correspond to the coordinated work of the Civil Guard with the British NCA, which resulted in 74 arrests in the United Kingdom.
Source: TSF
