Britain's 'Most Wanted' arrested on Algarve

http://news.sky.com/story/968011/uk-most-wanted-man-arrested-in-portugal

UK Most Wanted Man Arrested In Portugal

After five years on the run, Lee Dryden is arrested by police in a Portuguese resort over an elaborate drugs plot.

By Martin Brunt, Crime Correspondent
One of the UK's most wanted suspects has been arrested during a drugs raid in Portugal.

Lee Dryden, 49, was held with four others after the seizure of a boat with 178 kilograms of cocaine on board on the Algarve coast in the country's south.

Dryden, from South London, has been a fugitive for five years while Scotland Yard appealed for information about him.

He is wanted for questioning over an elaborate £400m cocaine smuggling plot which ended when a boat capsized during a storm and gang members and bales of drugs were plucked from the sea during a dramatic rescue.

In that scam in 2007, the gang had posed as holidaying fishermen in a tiny village in remote south west Ireland while they waited for the drugs shipment from South America.

They had picked up the drugs in a small inflatable dinghy and were heading back to shore when a storm turned over their boat. It was thought the boat's outboard engine had been filled mistakenly with diesel instead of petrol.

Various gang members, including a former Metropolitan Police detective, were later jailed in Ireland and London for up to 30 years.

But three suspects escaped and have been the subject of appeals by Scotland Yard's elite Projects Team.

One fugitive was later extradited from Spain and is awaiting trial in London, another is still on the run and Dryden is now in custody in Lisbon.

Dryden was arrested with another British man and two Germans at an apartment in the Algarve resort of Olhao where a yacht, the Delfin, was seized.

The arrests came at the end of a year-long operation involving the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

The operation was masterminded by a joint EU police and military unit the Maritime Analysis Operations Centre based in Lisbon.

A fifth suspect was arrested in Spain.

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And how long have we been saying the Algarve is awash with the stuff? Contrary to the Team Gonc party line that nothing ever happens there?

Oh, I knew Olhao rang a bell! Gonc wanted to be Mayor there, but got no support:

Gonçalo Amaral goes back into politics and wants to become mayor of Olhão SOSMaddie

By Duarte Levy
08 January 2009
Thanks to 'AnnaEsse' for translation

The former coordinator of the PJ, Gonçalo Amaral, is the name chosen by the Social Democrat Party (PSD) to head the party's list for the forthcoming urban district elections in the town of Olhão, in the south of Portugal.

Busy place, the Algarve.

http://www.cmjornal.xl.pt/detalhe/noticias/ultima-hora/algarve-uma-tonelada-e-meia-de-haxixe-apreendida

Algarve: One and a half tons of hashish seized
The cooperation between police authorities of Portugal and Spain resulted in the seizure of 1.543 tons of hashish and arrested two men in the south of the Guadiana River.

According to the Judicial Police, a pleasure boat was intercepted Portuguese, when carrying 50 bales of hashish, which "would presumably be downloaded for Portugal and Spain."
The two men, 32 and 35 years, were presented to the courts in Huelva, Spain, having been in custody.

only in gonc´s insane brain this type of crimes doesn´t happen.

this proves that gonc is seriously deranged. but, this is what to expect from gonc.

Any area that has drugs moving through it in such huge quantities - and this is just what has been siezed over the last day or two - is wide open to corruption. It's not peculiar to Portugal, it happens all over the world.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the police and public officials DON'T pretend it isn't happening.

Yes bb1, I agree with you.