26 July 1988
Reuters News
Three Britons suspected of involvement in one of the world's biggest marijuana smuggling rings have been arrested on the Mediterranean island of Majorca after an extradition request by the United States. Dennis Howard Marks, 43, his wife Judith, 33, and Geoffrey Kenyon, 46, were arrested on Monday and would be held in custody pending the extradition process, a police spokesman said on Tuesday.
Marks, alleged leader of the group and described by a U.S. drug enforcement official in Miami as the "Marco Polo of the drug trafficking world ", had arrived in Palma last Thursday from Zurich. He and his wife were arrested at their house in Palma, the island's capital, while Kenyon was detained at the restaurant he runs nearby, the police spokesman said. The three were suspected of involvement in a hashish trafficking ring which had operated since 1970, smuggling drugs into Spain, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, West Germany, the Philippines, Thailand, Canada, the United States, Singapore and Australia, the spokesman said.
He said Spanish police had no charges to bring against the three, but had made the arrests because of the U.S. extradition order, and following a concerted police effort by the countries involved. No drugs were seized during the arrests. A total of 22 people were named in a federal indictment in Miami on Monday. The indictment named Marks, who was cleared of drug smuggling charges by a London court in 1981, as the leader of the ring. The Palma police spokesman said a fourth person sought for extradition to the United States in the same case, William Roger Mead, was arrested earlier this month in Majorca. Mead, accused of carrying false documents at the time of his arrest, tried to escape custody three weeks ago by jumping from the second floor of a court building. He has been charged with causing damage to the car he landed on.
The Palma police spokesman said the arrests were not linked to the arrest of six people and the seizure of 17 tonnes of hashish in the northeastern Spanish province of Gerona on Monday. Authorities handling the Gerona case also said the two sets of arrests were not related. Under Spain's extradition laws, the High Court now has 80 days to decide whether or not to extradite the people detained in Palma.
The Palma police spokesman denied reports in British newspapers that the arrested people were linked with Irish republican guerrillas. "They have nothing to do with this," he said. He also denied reports that James McCann, an Irishman with alleged links with the IRA, had been arrested in Palma. "We know nothing about this man," he said.
The Palma police spokesman said the arrests in Majorca on Monday followed several weeks of police checks but he did not give details. The three were all living in Majorca but their passports showed Marks as from south Wales, his wife from Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and Kenyon from Ipswich, Suffolk. Police in Barcelona meanwhile said there was no link between the arrests in Palma and the detention of two Frenchmen and four Spaniards in Gerona province. A spokeswoman named the six as Frenchmen Jacques Antoine Cannavaggio and Jean Michel Secatore and Spaniards Jordi Pascual y Llorent, Jose Brossa Bosch, Luis Bosch Augue and Simeon Casane Marti. Cannavaggio, a 51-year-old Corsican sought by French police, was the suspected leader of a group which had been taking hashish from Lebanon and Morocco via Spain to western Europe, the spokeswoman said.
Using a boat and fast launches to smuggle the drug to the Spanish mainland, the group then took the hashish to Pascual's pig farm, which served as a front for storing the drug until it was taken to the rest of Europe, the spokeswoman said. Police found 15 tonnes of hashish hidden in a tunnel on the coast between the holiday resorts of Lloret del Mar and Tossa. Nearly two tonnes were found at the pig farm.
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