The Guardia Civil have arrested a man in Tenerife who has allegedly been selling firearms that he bought in pieces through internet portals, and then assembled himself in a hidden workshop in Santa Cruz. Among the variety of weapons that they seized are an anti-tank mine, homemade detonators, rifles, machine guns, a revolver, and numerous fundamental pieces and ammunition, they reported in an official press release.
The investigation started in March, when the Guardia Civil detected the shipment of a package by post from an eastern European country, destined for the detainee, which contained metal cartridges of Serbian origin commonly used in sniper rifles and light machine guns.
As part of the investigation, the agents verified that the detainee, through online sales portals, illegally imported incomplete or partial firearms, as well as ammunition and other essential parts, which he later assembled. With this he managed to have at his disposal, firearms without registering them in Spain, some of which even lacked any serial numbers.
In the search carried out in his home, a secret workshop was discovered where he carried out the assembly of the weapons as well as the repacking of cartridges. Various firearms, complete or in various stages of assembly were intervened, fundamental parts of firearms, numerous metal cartridges of different calibres (including war ammunition), as well as machines used for home repacking ammunition.
The detainee has been classified by the Guardia Civil investigators as an "expert gunsmith", despite lacking the required authorization to do so, and has extensive technical knowledge of firearms, their characteristics, parts and operation, to the point of being able to reconstruct the weapons from their parts and to modify the disabling measures some have to turn them into live weapons.
In the last five years, the Guardia Civil Information Service has carried out more than 90 operations against arms trafficking networks with a total of 435 people arrested, more than 4,845 firearms and 609,625 metal cartridges seized, 188 kilos of explosive materials, and more than 700,000 euros in cash and 20 clandestine workshops dismantled.
