Spanish police arrest 78 in major migrant smuggling crackdown, seize 18 speedboats

The network used the boats to transport synthetic drugs such as ecstasy from Spain to Algeria, and on the way back to smuggle migrants to the Spanish Mediterranean coast and the island of Ibiza, according to police.

The group is suspected of being behind at least 64 smuggling operations in which more than 2,000 people were brought to Spain. The proceeds are estimated to have exceeded the equivalent of SEK 263 million.

Police say the journeys were “extremely dangerous” and that the migrants were travelling “crammed together, at high speed, in difficult weather conditions”.