Hash (7 page)

After disembarking the ferry from Morocco, Si headed off to his Spanish home in Murcia, while I was met by Paco, one of Zaid’s men. We drive off in his car for a night-time rendezvous with the man himself. Although Paco speaks no English, I speak enough Spanish to manage a light conversation, which is punctuated by awkward silences as the vehicle heads through the rundown suburbs of Algeciras. As we near an industrial area, Paco drives around and around the same block of warehouses at least five times. He helpfully explains that this is done in order to make sure the police
are not tailing him because he does not want to lead them to Zaid’s headquarters.

Eventually Paco parks the car and as a secondary safety measure we walk at least a quarter of a mile to a warehouse. The streets are badly lit and every time a car passes us, Paco carefully checks it out with a squint of his eyes.

Eventually we reach a big garage-type door with a smaller door built within it. Paco knocks twice. We enter to find ourselves in a warehouse about four times the size of a normal lock-up garage with an office attached to it. Five men are gathered around a small white Citroën with its rear tailgate open. The men glance up with menacing looks on their faces until they recognise Paco. One of the men turns and approaches us and introduces himself as Zaid. He’s short and stocky and walks like a weightlifter on steroids. He talks in quickfire Spanish that is quite hard for me to understand.

Zaid has only agreed to meet me because he is the brother-in-law of a lawyer I know in Málaga. Without this introduction, he tells me, he wouldn’t come near me. He considers journalists –
Periodistas
 – to be ‘the enemy’. He immediately tells me how the newspapers exaggerate stories about drugs, which in turn then puts more pressure on Spain’s Policia National and Guardia Civil to arrest hash barons like himself. It is clear this sort of ‘behaviour’ infuriates Zaid. He says – like so many hash gangsters – that his drugs are doing no harm to anyone. I guess it’s his way of dealing with the ‘business’ he is in.

Meanwhile the high-pitched screeching noise of a speed
drill reminds us that the rest of his gang are unscrewing the inside covers of the Citroën’s tailgate. They then start loading small brick-shaped packs of clingfilm-wrapped hash into all available crevices of the Citroën.

Zaid explains that this shipment of hash is due to go cross-country up to Madrid where one of the city’s busiest drug dealers has a Rolodex filled with customers ready and waiting for the latest batch of high quality ‘product’.

Zaid beckons us over to the back of the Citroën as his men continue packing the car with drugs in a meticulous and measured manner. Zaid picks up one of the clingfilm bricks and squeezes it gently then offers me the chance to do the same. It feels rock hard at first but then there is a certain amount of give in it when I try a second time. ‘See? Just a few seconds of your body heat and it becomes softer,’ explains Zaid.

He tells me this one brick of hash is worth €40,000 in Madrid. He declines to tell me exactly what he is selling it on for but I presume it was probably in the region of 50 per cent of that value. Zaid in turn would have bought it from his Moroccan connection for probably 50 per cent of that price.

I discreetly count the number of hash bricks being hidden into that little Citroën and there are at least fifty. That means this car is about to transport drugs worth well in excess of €1 million to Zaid … It seems incredible that such a small vehicle can be used to transport such a valuable shipment. But then again, it is clear that it is at this point the hash
starts to make huge amounts of money for those prepared to finance its shipments. In a sense, the ones who take the real risks – the people in that Citroën – are nothing more than mules. Zaid says the two men in the car will get €3,000 each for driving the hash up to Madrid. Like any big business, it is the money-men who stand to make the most profits. They are risking not themselves but their cash and that seems a more valuable commodity than human lives in the secret underworld of hash.

Zaid goes on to explain the costs and complications involved in getting the hash from the coastline of southern Spain to the cities of Europe. He is careful to point out that he has nothing to do with the Moroccan end of the operation, but he openly talks about who needs to be bribed to get the hash out of North Africa.

There are different methods of transport into Europe, but there is one main route from Tangier and the Rif Mountains beyond: across that already familiar stretch of water called the Strait of Gibraltar. The real players in this game deal in huge quantities and run sophisticated operations. Zaid even tells a chilling anecdote about how a gang of Dutch criminals tried to set up their own smuggling ‘hub’ in Ketama and ended up with their throats cut.

‘These guys just didn’t get it,’ explains Zaid. ‘They thought by cutting out the Moroccan transporters, they could cut their costs and make even bigger profits but they are the ones who got cut. It’s madness to try and do business inside Morocco. Leave it to the locals, I say.’

Zaid openly admits that he himself comes from a family of Moroccans who immigrated to Spain three generations earlier. ‘Look, even I who am part Moroccan know it is dangerous to step on their tails. Of course, I have used my family connections to set up a supply route. But I have been very careful not to put any Moroccans out of business during that process.’

But Zaid knows all the pitfalls when it comes to the hash business. He says he has dealt with everyone from the Brit gangsters – ‘fair and strong’ – to the Balkan underworld – ‘evil and cold’ – and he claims that a few years ago he found himself doing business with a shady bunch of Moroccans who turned out to be Al-Qaeda terrorists trying to raise cash to buy weapons.

Zaid explained: ‘It was just before 9/11 so Al-Qaeda were more open about their activities and they had a cell of Moroccans working for them out of Tangier. The idea was that a bunch of Moroccan gangsters put up 50 per cent and Al-Qaeda the other 50 per cent and they shared the profits. But my friends the Moroccans said the Al-Qaeda boys were a nightmare to deal with. They didn’t understand the complex nature of hash smuggling and expected their profits to come pouring in virtually before the first shipment reached Spain. Then one of them accused the Moroccan gangsters of ripping them off and it ended in one guy dying and two being badly injured. From that moment on, no one in Morocco would agree to do business with Al-Qaeda. Eventually they set up their own supply route from one ‘friendly’ hash farm on the
other side of the Rif Mountains and transported the hash by road into Tunisia, where it was shipped across the Mediterranean to Italy.’

But Zaid says that after 9/11 Al-Qaeda’s hash-producing farm was raided by one of the area’s most powerful drug lords. After a two-day gunfight, Al-Qaeda retreated back across the border into Algeria, where it is believed they set up another hash farm. Zaid says that the way the local gangsters ran Al-Qaeda out of the Rif Mountains has become part of Ketama folklore. ‘The Moroccans are very proud of getting rid of the terrorists,’ explains Zaid. ‘They feel they showed great loyalty to their country although what they really did was take the pressure off their own activities because the Americans are always pressurising the Moroccan government to close down the hash fields in the Rif Mountains.’

Back in that Algeciras warehouse, Zaid’s men continue using their power tools to screw back the door linings of the little Citroën hatchback before it heads off up to Madrid. Zaid inspects the car after the operation is completed and claps two of his men on the back, congratulating them for a job well done. Now more relaxed, Zaid’s voice softens as he talks about his career as a hash baron.

‘I don’t deal in coke or anything else like heroin or crack because I know the prison sentences are much higher if you’re caught,’ he explained before I even asked. However, Zaid claims that even the hash trade is suffering from the worldwide recession, which has hit especially hard in Spain. ‘It’s certainly true that up until about five years ago the profits on each
shipment of hash were much greater. It’s a strange situation because the demand, especially here in Spain, remains very high although people have less money so it will slow down eventually. But the costs involved in smuggling it from Morocco are increasing by the month. Today, we have to build in all sorts of expenses, which simply didn’t exist a few years ago.’

Zaid was open about nearly all aspects of his criminal enterprise but was rather more reluctant when it came to discussing his family and how his ‘career’ affected them. ‘I have a wife and two children. I’m a regular sort of guy in many ways. I pick my kids up from school some days. I take them to the beach. We go on vacations together. My wife knows that I am involved in a risky business. That is all she needs to know. It’s important to remember that if I shared my knowledge with her then that would endanger her life because there are a lot of bad people in this game and they would stop at nothing to find out more about my operation.’

Zaid bear-hugs his two men before they drive off in the Citroën for the six-hour journey to Madrid with that shipment of €1 million worth of hash hidden in the vehicle. Before they leave the warehouse, Zaid and two other men check that it is clear in the street. Zaid then waves them off into the darkness for a trip that will personally earn him many tens of thousands of euros.

As Zaid is shutting the big double doors to the warehouse, he notices a vehicle parking up on the pavement about a hundred yards from the entrance to his building. He nods
at his two associates and they lock up the doors while I watch them from inside the poky little office attached to the warehouse.

Outside, Zaid strolls casually towards the vehicle parked further up the street. It is only then, as I continue watching from the office, that I notice there are two men sitting in the car.

For the first time since I met Zaid earlier that evening, I feel a sense of danger and risk in the air. His two men who closed the doors remain silent and they urge me to keep quiet by putting forefingers to lips. So I am left with no option but to watch Zaid as he continues to walk towards the car with the two men in it.

The man on the passenger side rolls down his window and Zaid leans in. There is an exchange of words. Then I catch a brief glimpse of Zaid getting an envelope out of the inside pocket of his jacket and passing it to the man in the car. Zaid then strolls casually back towards us.

Three minutes later, he is back inside the warehouse.

‘Relax,’ says Zaid. ‘Two tame cops who needed paying. They come round here every week and sit there until I give them some money. We look after them, they look after us.’

That night, Zaid and his men locked up the warehouse and insisted I accompany them to a lively local bar where beer and seafood was in plentiful supply. Zaid toasted me with a wry smile on his face. ‘Good luck with your book,’ he told me. ‘Just make sure you tell the truth.’

For a few moments, it felt as if there was a threatening
tone in his voice but there again I might have been imagining it.

At the end of the evening, I tried to pay the bill for everyone but Zaid insisted it was down to him. Then I noticed the barman refusing any cash from Zaid … it seems that people like Zaid are not expected to pay for anything thanks to their reputation in the community.

A few months later, I got a call from my lawyer friend in Málaga to say that Zaid had been shot dead by a hitman outside his own warehouse.

What goes around comes around.

Spain became a very popular destination for British criminals on the run following the collapse of the extradition treaty between the two countries in 1978. When the thieves behind London’s notorious 1983 £6 million Security Express robbery were spotted leading luxurious lives on the Costa del Sol it was even dubbed ‘The Costa del Crime’. It wasn’t until seven years later that Britain and Spain agreed a new extradition treaty when Spain joined the European Union.

In 2000, the then British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, finalised a new fast-track extradition treaty with the Spanish authorities, but it did little to stem the tide of crime rolling across Spain.

And still the Brits keep coming in. A seventy-five-year-old Briton was arrested by the Guardia Civil in 2011 on a yacht, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, which was found to be carrying 1,038 kilos of hashish worth €1.6 million on the drugs market.

As it happens, my interest in the secret and lucrative world of hash had partly been fuelled by living in southern Spain between 2000 and 2007. Working on a number of books about real-life British criminals living in the sun, I’d found that for all their bravado about robbing banks and security vans in the 1970s and 1980s, the most successful ones virtually all made their biggest fortune from drugs.

Some had even paid the ultimate price and lost their lives in pursuit of that elusive drugs ‘lottery win’ which they believed would enable them to quit crime altogether and enjoy a long and happy retirement.

Take Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson: his underworld infamy came directly from that so-called Crime of the Century in 1963. But the £40,000 which each of the robbers ended up making from the raid was never going to be enough for these characters to give up crime. South Londoner Wilson was considered one of the masterminds of the GTR and even escaped from prison for more than two years in the middle of serving a thirty-year sentence for his role in the robbery.

But when he finally got out in the mid-1980s, he found the underworld had changed beyond all recognition. Blaggings and robberies had been replaced by drugs as the main source of income for top level London villains. Charlie Wilson, ever the pragmatist, soon acknowledged that he needed to get a piece of the action from drugs sooner rather than later.

So he moved down to southern Spain, the infamous Costa del Crime, and began financing and running some of the
era’s most lucrative drugs deals. At first he kept strictly to hash because he knew, like so many others, that the sentences were much lighter than for cocaine. But the lure of the ‘white stuff’ proved too much to resist in the end and he set up a second ‘importation business’ from his home near Marbella, which dealt exclusively in coke. Meanwhile his hash runs continued to operate but on a much smaller scale.