£6m Costa drugs swoop

Feb 11 2008 by Sam Wood, The Journal

A MAN from the North East was arrested on the Costa del Sol, accused of handling nearly £6m worth of cocaine, which was headed for British streets.

Graham Hall, 41, from Wallsend, North Tyneside, was apprehended on Tuesday, just hours after notorious Dublin drugs dealer Paddy Doyle was gunned down on the edge of the resort town of Estepona, west of Marbella.

It was not clear last night whether Mr Hall had been released or if he was still being held by police.

Spanish murder squad detectives are working with Irish officers and are trying to establish a link between the drugs haul and the death of Mr Doyle last Monday.

Clues found at the scene of the brutal shooting led the Costa del Sol Drugs and Organised Crime Unit (Udyco) to set up a number of control points in the Estepona area.

On Tuesday, officers approached a group of people loading furniture on to a van in the town, a popular tourist destination. On inspecting the pieces, ranging from wardrobes to sofas, they discovered the 140 kilos of cocaine hidden in secret compartments inside.

Seven people, six British and one Irish, were arrested, one a youth. It is believed the drugs were to be transported back to Britain to sell on the streets, where they could be worth up to £5.8m. Mr Hall was one of those arrested along with Edward Thompson, 49, from Liverpool.

Spanish police have been working in collaboration with the Irish Garda following Monday’s shooting of Mr Doyle, a known Dublin gang member and drug dealer on the Bel-Air estate in Estepona.

An enforcer for a major Dublin drugs gang, Mr Doyle had to flee to Spain after being involved in a gangland feud which has claimed 10 lives since 2002.

He has been personally linked with at least three shootings.

It is thought that the 28-year-old was caught in an ambush set up by a rival drugs gang, thought to be either Turkish or Russian. The shooting took place at around 2pm on Monday. The victim was travelling in the front passenger seat of the vehicle accompanied by driver Gary Hutch, also a convicted Dublin criminal, when a gunman opened fire from another vehicle.

After the first shots hit the car in the windscreen, the victim threw himself from the vehicle and attempted to escape on foot. The gunman continued to fire, hitting the victim in the head and the face, apparently at point-blank range. Meanwhile, Mr Hutch lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a lamppost some 30 metres away from Mr Doyle’s body.

The post mortem examination, which took two days due to its complexity, revealed that Doyle had been riddled with 15 bullets.

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Hideaway for criminals on wanted list

SPAIN’S Costa del Sol is well known for its criminal connections.

A man wanted for a gangland killing on Tyneside two years ago was named last month among 10 suspected criminals hiding in the “Costa del Crime”.

Police believe Allan Foster flew from his Spanish hideaway to assassinate David ‘Noddy’ Rice in South Shields in May 2006 with a silenced semi-automatic gun. It is thought he flew out of the country the day after the killing, at a seaside car park near Marsden Grotto, and has remained a fugitive since.

Foster, 31, was named among 10 suspects by Crimestoppers on a most-wanted website targeting the Costa del Sol.

The 10 include other men wanted for murder, serious violent offences, robbery and for their roles in multi-million pound drug trafficking rings.

The Spanish coastal resorts have been dubbed the Costa del Crime since the 1970s because hundreds of wanted British criminals are thought to have fled there.

Mr Rice, 42, was shot nine times by two masked men on the seafront at South Tyneside after being lured to the meeting by Steven Bevens, 39. Bevens worked for Foster, who police believe fired the fatal shots. Last year Bevens was sentenced to life with a minimum of 26 years behind bars for murder, while getaway driver Derek Blackburn, 51, of Humberside, who turned informer on the duo, was given four years for assisting an offender, later cut to two and a half years.

Police believe it was Foster, described as a major player on the international drugs scene, who actually pulled the trigger.

He sometimes goes under the name Sean Wilkinson, and is known to have associates in the Kent area, and links to the Canary Islands and Majorca.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Spanish police authorities are involved in the latest appeal.