Mérida (EFE) in accordance that it will mean three years and six months in prison for the ringleader of the plot and five years for the other two defendants.
It was expected that this Wednesday the defendants for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requested prison sentences of 14 years in the case of the head of the criminal network, and eleven years and eight months for the other two defendants, in charge of receiving, transporting and distributing the drug.
degree of attempt
All were accused of a crime of drug trafficking to which, finally, the degree of attempt has been applied, which “is not common in this type of process in which a considerable amount of cocaine is involved”, the lawyer pointed out. of one of the defendants, Marta Mendoza.
In this sense, Francisco Miranda, lawyer for another of the defendants, has stressed that it is a good agreement by reducing to five years the sentence “so exasperating that the Public Prosecutor proposed” of more than eleven years, and has indicated that his The defendant has the possibility of suspending the sentence for his condition as a drug addict.
For his defendants, the two transport managers, who had already served sentences of five and six years for drug trafficking, the reduction has been established at five years for being repeat offenders.
For his part, the lawyer for the ringleader of the plot, Ricardo Álvarez, has expressed his satisfaction with the agreement because “we started with a 14-year sentence that has been reduced to three and a half, which is quite favorable”, since his defendant He had no criminal record, which has enabled a broader reduction.
Fines remain
However, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains for each of them a fine of 61,270,000 euros.
The Colombian authorities informed the Spanish authorities in October 2021 that an organization based in that country had agreed to transport a significant amount of narcotic substances to Spain.
The Colombian Attorney General’s Office and the Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor of the Spanish National Court authorized the controlled delivery of 250 packages of cocaine.
The narcotic substance arrived at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport and the Drug and Organized Crime Unit of the General Commissariat of the Judicial Police obtained authorization for six officials to act as undercover agents.
With the intermediation of these agents, the delivery was completed with the ringleader of the gang and, at the moment that those in charge of transport proceeded to load the packages on the Mérida ship, the National Police operation took place to seize the cocaine. .