Drugs Ring Swoop (1988)

ENGLISH, SPANISH POLICE ARREST SUSPECTS IN DRUGS RING SWOOP
26 July 1988
Reuters News

British police said on Tuesday they arrested four people in connection with one of the world's biggest marijuana smuggling rings whose suspected head once worked for British intelligence.  A police spokesman said the action was related to the arrest of three Britons on Monday by police on Spain's Mediterranean island of Majorca. Among those detained, according to Spanish radio, was Dennis Howard Marks, the ring's alleged leader.

In Miami, U.S. drug enforcement officials named Marks, 43, in a federal indictment citing 22 people altogether.  A police spokesman in London said the arrests of the four people in Britain were made in co-operation with U.S. authorities, customs officials and other international agencies.  The four were due to be charged and appear in court on Tuesday, he said, and U.S. authorities were seeking their extradition.

None has yet been identified.  A spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Miami office said the operation had dismantled one of the world's largest marijuana and hashish organisations.  The DEA spokesman said Marks was already a fugitive from justice in the United States. He jumped bail in Nevada in 1976 while awaiting trial on drug-related charges.  All three people arrested in Majorca -- Marks, his wife Judith and Briton Geoffrey Kenion -- were being held at the Spanish Mediterranean island's headquarters.  In Barcelona on Monday, Spanish police said they had arrested six people after seizing 15 tonnes of hashish hidden in a tunnel overlooking an inlet in the Costa Brava. It was not immediately clear whether the arrests were linked with those in Majorca.

The U.S. indictment said Marks headed an international drug smuggling ring that spanned 14 countries from Thailand and Hong Kong to Britain and West Germany.  Marks was cleared by a London court in 1981 of smuggling 15 tonnes of cannabis worth 20 million pounds sterling (34 million dollars) found on the Hebrides Islands in Scotland.

Evidence was presented at his trial that he had briefly worked for Britain's MI6 secret service.  Those held in Barcelona -- two Corsicans, a Portuguese and three Spaniards -- were suspected of organising a drug syndicate which stored hashish shipped from Lebanon and Morocco before smuggling it to northern Europe.  The hashish was found in a 100-metre (300-foot) tunnel which had been bored into the rockface of the inlet.  Another two tonnes of the drug were later found in a nearby farmhouse. Police estimated the street value of the hashish, the biggest haul ever in Spain, at up to 70 million dollars.