UP IN SMOKE

PALMA
GUARDIA Civil triumphantly set alight 3'175 kilos of seized hashish hauls at Majorca's Son Reus incinerator yesterday.
Other narcotics which have been confiscated so far this year on the island were added to the pyre, the final weight of which amounted to no less than twenty tonnes. The success of drugs raids since January has been such that it led central government delegate in the Balearics, Ramon Socias yesterday to congratulate regional Chief of Staff of the Guardia Civil, Basilio Sanchez Rufo on his handling of the drugs crackdown.

During his presence at the incineration event, Socias said that the hashish which was currently being torched was largely the result of Operation Alcotan, in which a catamaran had been apprehended by security forces off the southern tip of Ibiza earlier this year. Spanish Guardia Civil had undertaken an exhaustive chase of the vessel which had set out from a North African destination and which was suspected of being a carrier of narcotics.