Two Spanish Customs agents in Gibraltar are seriously injured after being stoned by a group of tobacco dealers. The Gibraltar authorities accuse the officials of violating their sovereignty and jurisdiction.
It was five in the morning when one of these two agents —who were patrolling the Levante beach area, in waters close to the Rock — detected a boat that was sailing at full speed. It was a boat used for tobacco smuggling. The Customs Surveillance ship, based in Algeciras, began to chase them . In the midst of the chase, the agents’ boat engines stopped working. According to ABC sources from Customs Surveillance, when the agents stepped on land, the problems began. On the beach there was a group of traffickers waiting to load or unload a boat.
This group of people did not like the presence of the two agents and began to rebuke them and throw stones at them. Some of them were more than 20 centimeters and hit the agents, who were forced to raise the boat in order to flee. They asked the Peñón authorities for help to get out of there and they were the ones who stood between the group of people and the agents. Thus they gained some time to flee. Although they did not stop receiving stones, they managed to return to the sea and rowed away.
The Government of Gibraltar has described this afternoon as a “very serious violation” of its sovereignty and jurisdiction the entry of these two agents of the Spanish Customs Surveillance Service. The authorities of the Rock affirm that these officials were intervening in an operation against the smuggling of tobacco, which “would constitute a very serious infringement of the law”, in the case of “confirming that the Spanish officials fired their weapons in Gibraltar”. They call this action “reckless and dangerous” in an area “with a high density of civilian population, given the proximity of a residential development.”
The Government of Spain “categorically rejects the terms” of this statement issued “by representatives of the British Government in relation to the incident, as well as the claims of an alleged British sovereignty over the territory and waters of Gibraltar included in it.” “This Declaration is especially incomprehensible at a time when Spain has put an agreement on the table to create an area of shared prosperity,” they add from Foreign Affairs. They also demand “effective measures to combat smuggling that harms the entire area and wish the Spanish agents their wishes for a speedy recovery.”
