Dutchman is accused of fatally stabbing his girlfriend in Malgrat de Mar near Barcelona on Sunday.

26 year old Dutchman, named as Ratko H. is accused of fatally stabbing his girlfriend in Malgrat de Mar near Barcelona on Sunday.The attack took place in the street just before 2pm with the victim dying shortly afterwards, and then the aggressor injured himself. He is now in a serious condition in hospital.
Reporting restrictions have been put on the case which is being investigated by the regional police, Los Mossos d’Esquadra.

Ettore Facchinetti, 60, was detained in the town of Caldes de Montbuy near Barcelona

Ettore Facchinetti, 60, was detained in the town of Caldes de Montbuy near Barcelona, a police spokeswoman told AFP."He is accused of coordinating in Spain a network that smuggled cocaine to Italy," she said.Facchinetti, a suspected member of 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in Italy for drugs trafficking and was the subject of a European arrest warrant.Since 2006 more than a dozen leaders of the Camorra and other Italian mafia groups have been arrested in Spain, the main entryway into Europe for cocaine from Latin America and hashish from North Africa.Last week Spanish police said they had detained a suspected leader of a Calabrian mafia, who was once a security guard for an Italian government minister, in the southern port of Marbella.Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorra, a best-selling expose of the criminal underworld in Naples, has said several mafia clans have transferred what he termed "their most risky activities," such as drug-running, to Spain, particularly to Barcelona.
Speaking in Barcelona earlier in February, he said Camorra bosses refer to the Spain's Mediterranean coast as "Costa Nostra" or "our coast", alluding to the Sicilian mafia's "Cosa Nostra".

Salvatore Zazo leader of the Mazzarella crime family captured in Barcelona

Italy's paramilitary Carabinieri police working with Spain's Civil Guard arrested Salvatore Zazo as he was making a phone call in a shop in Barcelona on Saturday.Italian police say a Neapolitan fugitive wanted on drug trafficking charges has been captured in Barcelona.Italian police official Angelo Mazzagatti said on Sunday that an arrest warrant had been issued for Zazo a few months ago. He said Zazo, 52, was suspected of international trafficking in cocaine.Investigators say they believe Zazo has been leading the Mazzarella crime family in the historic center of Naples. It is part of the Camorra criminal syndicate.Police say authorities will ask for Zazo's extradition to Italy to stand trial.

David Hartley seeking a court order to allow to be transferred from a prison in Barcelona back to England to serve his sentence

David Hartley was jailed for 16 years in Spain last month after being convicted of killing his friend Paul Pedersen at a campsite near Barcelona six years ago.
Hartley, who was a drug user and drinker, strangled Danish holidaymaker Pedersen as he slept on the night of 23rd June 2002 before stealing 200 euros from his victim's pocket.After the attack, Hartley fled back to Mansfield but was arrested for the murder later that year.Despite a two-year battle by solicitor Paul Bacon to try to stop Hartley being extradited, the Home Secretary ordered that the 41-year-old return to Spain to await his trial.Now four years on, Mr Bacon is seeking a court order to allow Hartley to be transferred from a prison in Barcelona back to England to serve his sentence.
Speaking to Chad this week, Mr Bacon said: "Hartley has been in Spain for the last four years after we lost the fight to stop his extradition."He cannot speak any Spanish other than the odd word he has picked up in prison while awaiting his trial and he wants to be close to his family."He has kept in touch with his relatives, but being in Spain obviously makes visiting him difficult or impossible for some of his elderly relatives."I believe he stands a good chance of being transferred to a prison in England to serve his sentence, but because the Spanish judicial system is so slow it may take some time."

British man been murdered in Barcelona

Body of the 46 year old man, who has not been named, was found by a friend on Thursday afternoon. The Catalan regional police, Los Mossos d’Esquadra, are investigating what they describe as the violent death of a 46 year old British man whose body was found in the l’Eixample area of Barcelona. Police believe he was beaten to death, although they are waiting for the full results of the autopsy.
They were alerted to the case by a phone call at 4pm on Thursday afternoon from a friend of the man who found the body of his friend when he went to visit

Mario Santafede member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia detained in the car park of a luxury apartment in the northeastern city of Barcelona

mafia suspect on the list of 100 most wanted fugitives in Italy has been arrested in Barcelona, Italian police said today.Mario Santafede, 55, a member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, was picked up in a joint raid carried out by Italian and Spanish police on a flat in a residential area of the city.Santafede, who is the object of an international arrest warrant, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in his absence for criminal association in connection with drug trafficking. He has been on the run since 2004.Spanish police working in cooperation with their Italian counterparts have arrested a suspected leader of Italy's Camorra crime syndicate, the Interior Ministry said Saturday.Members of Spain's elite special operations police moved in to detain Mario Santafede in the car park of a luxury apartment in the northeastern city of Barcelona on Friday evening, the ministry said in a statement.Santafede, 55, is wanted by Italian authorities for suspected cocaine smuggling from Colombia and Ecuador to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy, the ministry said.
The suspect, who is thought by investigators to have close links with other Naples-based criminals, is also wanted in connection with at least three murders, the ministry said.Santafede, who was in possession of false Italian and British identity papers when arrested, had changed his appearance through exercise, the ministry said.
The suspect was expected to appear before a judge at the National Court in Madrid later Saturday prior to possible extradition to Italy, the ministry said.
Santafede is one several suspected Camorra leaders arrested in or near Barcelona in recent years.Police arrested Patrizio Bosti, who was on Italy's list of 30 most-wanted criminals, while having dinner in Girona last month. Bosti, 49, had been on the run since 2005.In February 2006, Raffaele Petrazzuolo was picked up in Barcelona and deported to Italy on suspicion of criminal activity and complicity with mob leaders.Also in 2006 a man identified only as Carmine R., 38, was detained in the seaside resort of Sitges, just outside Barcelona.

Neapolitan Mafia chief arrested in Barcelona

Raffaele Laurenti is an alleged member of the Neapolitan Mafia.
An alleged member of the Neapolitan Mafia have been arrested in Barcelona. 31 year old Raffaele Laurenti was found in a flat in Calle Calabria. The arrest follows a similar detention of another alleged member of the Camorra in Barcelona last month.
The arrest on Tuesday was carried out in a joint operation between the Spanish Guardia Civil and Italian Carabineros.The suspect was unarmed at the time and offered no resistance.

Cocaine was found in a van near a Barcelona

According to the police, cocaine was found in a van near a Barcelona. shopping center. It's the third major cocaine bust of the summer in Spain. and the biggest carried out in the country on land in all of 2008.
Authorities say the drugs would have fetched up to $120 million if peddled by street dealers, or $68 million if sold wholesale.
Spanish authorities said last week they seized 2.5 tons of cocaine in a high-seas raid in international waters of the Atlantic on July 26th and arrested 11 people. Spanish police acting on a tip-off from U.S. authorities have seized 1.4 tons of cocaine and arrested eight South American suspects, officials said Tuesday.
The drugs were found in a van near a Barcelona shopping center, in the third major cocaine bust of the summer in Spain and the biggest carried out in the country on land in all of 2008, the National Police said in a statement.
The investigation began in June when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration told Spanish authorities about a drug trafficking gang that wanted to smuggle cocaine from South America to Spain, police said.
Spanish agents tracked two members of the ring that traveled from Venezuela to oversee delivery of the drugs.Earlier this month, authorities seized the cocaine and arrested four people as they tried to collect it. The other four suspects were arrested in a Barcelona hotel, the police statement said without giving any dates.
Six of them are Colombian and the other two are from Venezuela, it added.The drugs would have fetched up to euro80 million ($120 million) if peddled by street dealers, or euro45 million ($68 million) if sold wholesale, the statement said.
In another big drug bust, Spanish authorities said last week they had seized 2.5 tons of cocaine in a high-seas raid in international waters of the Atlantic on July 26 and arrested 11 people.

nutritionist in Barcelona accused of monitoring his patients' bathroom habits with the help of a hidden camera.

Police have arrested a nutritionist in Barcelona accused of monitoring his patients' bathroom habits with the help of a hidden camera.The suspect, identified by police as Jorge I. P., is accused of violating the privacy of his clients, who included the prominent Catalan politician Joan Puigcercos, top motorcyclist Jorge Lorenzo, and even the sister of former Barcelona soccer star Ronaldinho. The camera was found by a cleaner hidden behind a radiator in the toilet of his clinic. The device was connected by wire to his computer, which is being analyzed by police to determine whether he recorded any of the illicit footage.Jorge I. P. told officers after his arrest that he had installed the camera in an attempt to catch clients stealing from the clinic, a claim that prosecutors have rejected.If found guilty, the suspect could face between one to four years in prison.

Police are investigating the death of a man whose badly burned body was found in a wooded area of the Garraf natural park

Police are investigating the death of a man whose badly burned body was found shortly after midnight last night in a wooded area of the Garraf natural park near Sitges (Barcelona). It seems that the man was hit over the head before being doused in some kind of inflammable liquid then set alight. The body was discovered after fire-fighters had been called in to extinguish the resulting bush fire.

Spanish police have arrested five teenage computer hackers

Spanish police have arrested five teenage computer hackers who allegedly disabled internet pages run by government agencies in the United States, Latin America and Asia, police said. The group, who attacked some 21,000 pages over two years, were arrested last week in Barcelona, Burgos, Málaga and Valencia following an investigation that began in March after the web page of a Spanish political party was disabled.

Spanish police have arrested in the city of Barcelona a man wanted by the Argentine authorities for suspected drug trafficking.

Spanish police have arrested in the city of Barcelona a man wanted by the Argentine authorities for suspected drug trafficking. Police sources said the man wanted in Argentina belonged to an organization dismantled at the end of last year when it tried to smuggle around a ton of cocaine into Spain. The Algerian-born French citizen who is under arrest was a kingpin of the organization that fronted as a company that imported protective coverings for the grass in stadiums. The case goes back to February 2007, when the Argentine judiciary began to investigate the international organization made up mainly of Bolivian and Argentine citizens living in Spain. Argentine police were able to take 13 of the suspected members of the organization into custody last December following a concert at Boca Juniors soccer stadium en Buenos Aires after finding narcotics in the base of the scaffolding and in the plastic sheeting, just as the material was about to be shipped to Spain.
Alerted by Interpol, the Spanish police learned that the fugitive was living in Barcelona, where he was finally arrested.

Frank Rijkaard, saw his home robbed while he was inside

Barcelona Manager, Frank Rijkaard, saw his home robbed while he was inside with his family on Sunday night. The thieves climbed up outside the front of the building to gain access through a bedroom window. They made off with luxury watches and jewellery and what is described by the regional Catalan police, Los Mossos d’Esquardra, describe as ‘a lot of money in cash’.Rijkaard lives in the Sarrià district of Barcelona, and only realised that the theft had taken place when he saw the upturned bedroom.Rijkaard’s son heard the dog barking and saw one of the thieves.
The police commented that they did not know whether the thieves were stupid, but they must realise attacking the home of someone so well known would not benefit them in the long run. They think the house was probably chosen therefore by chance.

Street fight that ended in the death of a 16-year-old Venezuelan girl.

Catalan regional police have arrested six Latin American youths in connection with a street fight that ended in the death of a 16-year-old Venezuelan girl. The Catalan police could not say if the 25 youths that took part in the fight early on Sunday morning were members of organised youth gangs. The main suspect of the crime is Alexis Emmanuel C.M, 20, a native of the Dominican Republic. The young man is believed to have stabbed his victim to death. The police said that they had recovered the knife that probably caused the death of the Venezuelan adolescent. The fight took place in a suburb of Barcelona, where the youths had met at a party. Police could not say what was the cause of the fight.

Civil Guard officers suspected of involvement in the theft of almost half a ton of cocaine

Three of the Civil Guard officers suspected of involvement in the theft of almost half a ton of cocaine from Barcelona Port in January 2005 have now been remanded to custody, and it’s understood, according to information from El País newspaper, that another two were released with charges. Also remanded was an ex chief inspector with the National Police. A former Civil Guard who is now a local police officer was granted bail of 3,000 €, the paper said.The charges against them are drug trafficking, corruption, unlawful association, bribery and revealing secret information, and they are believed to have helped a gang to steal the cocaine which was under guard at the port. More than a ton of the drug had come in on a container of frozen prawns, and was seized thanks to information from the US Drug Enforcement Agency.El País said the investigation into the theft reopened recently thanks to information from a reformed criminal. They also note telephone tapping which took place after the theft, and said the gang who stole the drugs knew security would be lax when they arrived at the port to break into the container.

Terrorist threat in Southern Spain

"That these people were ready to go into action as terrorists in Spain - that came as a surprise," said Judge Baltasar Garzon, Spain's highest antiterrorism magistrate. "In my opinion, the jihadi threat from Pakistan is the biggest emerging threat we are facing in Europe. Pakistan is an ideological and training hotbed for jihadists, and they are being exported here."
Officials say the Barcelona case points to a more serious dynamic: Pakistanis with no apparent previous links to Europe who appear to have been sent there on a terrorist mission.
"We had 20 terrorists show up in Spain that had been trained in Pakistan that were going to be suicide bombers, fanning out over Europe," Mike McConnell, director of US national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
Although some of the suspects had been living in Spain, McConnell's remarks underscored statements by the Spanish authorities that in addition to the 14 suspects who had been arrested, others had eluded capture.
In late 2004, the police arrested 11 Pakistani men on suspicion of plotting to attack two landmark buildings in Barcelona, financing terrorism, and drug trafficking, although only six were convicted, two for document forgery.