In May, a woman from Torre Pacheco contacted emergency services to report that her brother had been kidnapped. He had described being forced from his car into another vehicle filled with armed individuals in the town of Roldán. He eventually appeared safe at a bus station after the frightening incident. Investigators have since clarified the sequence of events and connected this kidnapping to another case in the nearby province of Alicante.
According to a press release from the Ministry of the Interior, two criminal groups were involved in the two men’s unlawful confinement. The operation, named Abderol-Microwave, was conducted in coordination between the Civil Guard and the National Police. It led to the arrest of eight suspects across Murcia, Alicante, Almería, and Barcelona.
All eight suspects have prior criminal records and are currently charged with illegal detention, belonging to a criminal organization, illegal possession of weapons, and drug trafficking.
“They caught the wrong person”
Returning to the situation in Roldán, the suspects allegedly moved the victim to an industrial warehouse in Planes, Alicante. There they took the victim’s phone, tied him to a pole, and left him in that position overnight. He was released, or perhaps he was found the following day, with authorities noting that the wrong person had been targeted.
Identification of the victim helped link this case to another investigation involving a different kidnapping in Alcoy, where the person arrested was believed to be the person who abducted someone else. On that occasion, the perpetrators used a similar tactic, taking the victim to a residence in an urbanization near Torre Pacheco. The hostage was held under threat for three days, with demands for large sums of money and for more than a kilo of cocaine to be smuggled to Morocco. The ministry stated that the detainee was released after the money was handed over.
The operation was carried out by members of the Unit Against Illegal Immigration Networks and Falsified Documents, part of the National Police’s Provincial Immigration and Border Brigade, along with the Organic Unit of Judicial Police. The Civil Guard in Murcia supported the effort, with assistance from their counterparts in Almería, Alicante, and Barcelona. The coordinated effort underscores how intertwined organized crime networks can be across multiple regions and how police entities work together to resolve such cases and bring suspects to justice. [Official statements from authorities provide these details and confirm the chronological link between the two incidents.]