Spain: Pakistani Drug Gang Fight in Badalona (Barcelona): One Dead, Several Injured, Nine Arrests

Hat tip Vlad Tepes



On Sunday evening two rival gangs of Pakistani drug dealers engaged in a pitched battle with machetes and clubs in the community of Badalona (northern Barcelona). One is dead, about ten injured, two in critical condition, and nine are in custody. The video and photos are graphic. Below is the English-language The Sun.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10229937/machete-brawl-barcelona-metro-injured/

We are working on finding Spanish language news reports and videos. El Pais, below, has a video with no narration and photo.


https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/10/28/catalunya/1572248802_580999.html

*Update: Translation of El Pais article by Fousesquawk.


https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/10/28/catalunya/1572248802_580999.html

One dead and two gravely injured in a gang fight in Badalona

Various witnesses have described a fight with chains, knives and baseball bats

Barcelona 28 October 2019 13:59 EDT

The young man, Jean Pierre (19), was clearing up the last tables of the bar where he worked yesterday, in front of the Gorg Metro stop in Badalona, when he saw "a mountain of people coming up from the beach." Sure that there were some 30-40, located in the middle of a type of small walkway, they began with insults and "ended up hitting each other with machetes and clubs".   He and his friend closed the doors of the bar because of what could have occurred. One youth died and there are two more wounded gravely in the gang fight that took place Sunday at ten pm, according to what the (Catalan police) have reported. The Urban Guard has detained nine persons, all of Pakistani origin. 

The mayor of the municipality, the Socialist Alex Pastor, explained that two clans fighting for territorial control of the drug traffic were there expressly to confront each other. "One of the groups arrived from Barcelona, from the neighborhood of Ciutat Vella", he indicated in an interview on TV3. The Counselor for the Interior, Miguel Buch, also referred on RAC1, to a settling of accounts over a drug conflict. The fights with knives and clubs has occurred repeatedly in the center of Barcelona in the past years for the control of the area. The police have attributed the battles between the clans to dominate the sale of ( merchandise) and drugs in the center of the city.  "They always resolve their conflicts with a lot of violence," note police sources. 

Irene (34) is still shaken. Jean Pierre waiter of the bar she is in charge of, called her in the night and where she is now seated, telling her what was happening. On parking her car, she saw a young guy saying, "I'm dying, I'm dying," and was running and asking for help from the police. "He raised his red shirt squirting (blood) from his head to his legs," she explained. When she arrived at the bar, just a few meters further on, another young man hidden behind a pillar repeated the same: " They told me not to approach, but how was I not going to approach if he was yelling that he was going to die?" He had at least 6 stab wounds according to the account by Jean Pierre, who also saw him. "The skin was opened like meat," describes Irene, who took his pulse, hoping that the ambulance would arrive.

The battle did not last more than ten minutes, tells a group of neighbors, who commented in a  group what happened.  "They (caught) one on a corner and beat him without stopping," they explain among themselves. "It was hard to see," they say (the fight), which they became aware of from the screams that (were heard) from their balconies. They had no doubt that the fight had ended very badly. They called the police, but nobody dared to go down into the street. They had never seen anything similar before.

Several images of the fight ran on social media, where you see some 30 armed people fighting in the street. The witnesses talk of chains, axes, baseball bats and knives.  In the area, a neighbor found one of the bloodied knives in the morning. "They didn't come to fight. They came to kill," continues Irene. Two of the wounded fled into the metro, where they ended up being treated by the System of Medical Emergencies (SEM). 

On February 9, a man of Dominican origin died after a fight in Barcelona. The (Catalan police) attribute the death to a conflict precisely for the control of space between groups dedicated to the drug traffic. The victim died  of a beating presumably by a group of Pakistanis.

The Catalan police have carried out several operations against Pakistani gangs who fight in the street for control of the zone where they sell (merchandise) and drugs. In September 2017, agents arrested  members of a band of street vendors faced off against another group who arrived from Italy, with whom they fought gang fights. Many of the arrestees in that operation lived in Badalona.