Ola Brunkert bled to death after a shard of glass pierced his neck

Civil Guard headquarters in Madrid said: "All the indications are that this was a tragic accident. "A glass door in the kitchen of the house was shattered and it appears that this man fell through the door. "He then managed to get out into the garden where he died."Brunkert had been a jazz drummer and a member of the blues band Slim's Blues Gang, before joining the pop group Science Poption in the mid-1960s. His first-known session with Abba was also the group's first single, People Need Love. Brunkert was one of only two musicians to appear on all of Abba's albums.

Ola Brunkert, the session drummer heard on nearly every Abba hit the legendary Swedish band had in the 1970s and early 1980s, has died after a freak accident on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca, local justice authorities said Monday.
The 61-year-old apparently bled to death after a shard of glass pierced his neck when he stumbled through a glass door leading from the kitchen to the garden of his holiday home where he lived alone. Authorities said after an initial post mortem examination that the musician apparently lost consciousness after falling, and then bled to death. The drummer was discovered by a neighbour who late Sunday chanced by the house, which is in a compound of holiday homes near Areta, in the east of Majorca. Authorities said the compound was largely empty during the winter months - accounting for no one being immediately available to offer first aid. Brunkert was one of the most sought-after session drummers in Sweden in the 1970s, and played in a variety of jazz and blues bands as well as on the Abba hits that dominated pop music from their 1974 hit Waterloo to the band's break-up in 1982.

Swedish super-band ABBA's long-time drummer Ola Brunkert was found dead in his Mallorca, home over the weekend.

Swedish super-band ABBA's long-time drummer Ola Brunkert was found dead in his Mallorca, home over the weekend. Spanish police say the gruesome death was caused by a freak accident in which Brunkert bled to death after puncturing his throat with a broken piece of glass. According to CNN, police believe the drummer may have fallen against a glass partition that separated his kitchen from his garden, causing the glass to break and fatally cut his throat.A former drummer for 1970s Swedish pop group ABBA, Ola Brunkert, has been found dead after an apparent accident in his house in Mallorca, Spanish police said on Monday.Brunkert bled to death from a throat wound which police suspect was caused after he accidentally smashed a pane of glass, a spokesperson for the Civil Guard police said, adding that authorities were awaiting the result of an autopsy.

Gibraltar non co-operatation in Spain’s fight against money laundering

The government of Spain has requested has requested the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) to return Gibraltar to its list of non-cooperative off-shore financial services centre because of its ‘opacity’ and its location close to the Costa del Sol, as part of Spain’s fight against money laundering.The OECD has so far considered the Rock ‘co-operative’ because of its ‘commitment to European law and response to recommendations made by international organizations such as the International Financial Action Group.Nevertheless, Spain alleges that Gibraltar makes no effort to co-operate with the fiscal services of its northern neighbour, despite the fact that the British Colony is in a ‘risk zone’ between Southern Spain and Northern Africa, as well as close to the Costa del Sol, where ‘real estate’ corruption, money laundering and drug trafficking are present.Over the last few years, Gibraltar has become a ‘paradise’ for online gambling, which is also a worry for experts in money laundering techniques, and is an international financial centre that is ‘not as modest as the Gibraltar authorities insist on saying.
The Rock has close to 30,000 inhabitants, yet is home to 19 banks, 10 branches of international organizations, 17 insurance companies, over 30 insurance brokers, 30 investment companies, 15 money exchange offices and 28,000 active companies of various denominations. Spain considers these facts as contributing to the colony’s ‘opacity’ and puts forward an example: neither Britain nor Gibraltar were willing to co-operate with investigations into the ‘Ballena Blanca’ case uncovered in Marbella. Sources close to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and to others such as the Banco de España and the National Stock Exchange Commission have stated that, in terms of fiscal control, ‘nothing has advanced as far as Gibraltar is concerned’.
Therefore Madrid wants Gibraltar to once again be placed on the ‘black list’ of uncooperative off-shore centres that includes Andorra, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands and Monaco, among others.

Russian Mafia corrupt Marbella Police?

Inspectors Alfredo Marijuan and Carlos Farré from Marbella were detained following an investigation into alleged corruption of the elite Udyco force, which saw 40 officers questioned.both are members of the Costa del Sol’s crack anti-corruption police force have been arrested for alleged fraud and embezzlement. A further two high ranking officers – Fuengirola-based Issac Pacheco Suárez and Eusebio Vázquez – were released with embezzlement charges.The charges relate to alleged payments made by Russian nationals for information relating to police operations.The Udyco division of the Costa del Sol police force was involved in several corruption crackdowns in Málaga in recent years – including Operations Malaya, Ballena Blanca and Hidago, which all centered upon illicit dealings in Marbella.

Gibraltar to a blacklisted as an outlaw tax haven.

Spain is due to ask the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to return Gibraltar to a blacklist of tax havens that refuse to cooperate in fighting money laundering and other financial crimes, despite the British colony's promises of greater transparency. A spokesman for the Spanish tax office told EL PAÍS last week that the only fiscal information Spanish authorities receive from Gibraltar is "scarce and mostly useless," and that the government of the rocky outcrop on Spain's south coast routinely refuses to cooperate in investigations into money laundering and tax evasion."As far as we are concerned, Gibraltar is still a non-cooperative tax haven," the Spanish official said.

Mariluz Cortes police to believe she was grabbed from behind

Police believe five-year-old was suffocated before being thrown into river
The autopsy on the body of Mariluz Cortes shows the five-year-old died only hours after she went missing on January 13.Police recovered her badly decomposed body from a river estuary in Huelva on March 8 – almost two months after she disappeared while buying sweets near her home.Tests revealed Mariluz had suffered a broken rib before her death, leading police to believe she was grabbed from behind.
Marks on her face show her mouth and nose were covered until she suffocated to death.Police have ruled out the possibility that the five-year-old died as a result of accidentally falling into either of the two rivers that run through the city.
Officers are now searching the banks of the Odiel and Tinto rivers to discover the location she was thrown in to the water.Her body was found fully-clothed and tests revealed no sexual assault had taken place.The girl’s parents - Juan Jose Cortes, 34, a former professional footballer, and Irene Suarez – had maintained from the first day of her disappearance that she had been abducted.The case has drawn parallels with that of missing British toddler, who disappeared in May last year. Huelva is a short drive from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz from where Madelaine McCann disappeared in May last year while her parents were dining with friends.

200 vultures apparently killed a cow and its newborn calf on a farm near Villar de Peralonso

Colony of around 200 vultures apparently killed a cow and its newborn calf on a farm near Villar de Peralonso (Salamanca) yesterday lunchtime. It seems that the cow went into labour shortly before noon, but when the farmer returned to check on progress around two and a half hours later, he found around two hundred vultures hungrily devouring the two corpses. The local mayor said that "It's a very unusual incident because vultures never eat live animals," adding that there had been reports of a similar case recently in the nearby village of El Manzano "though nobody paid very much attention at the time." Unusually large colonies of vultures have also been reported in the Arribes del Duero area recently. Being carrion birds, their chances of survival have been severely hampered by the introduction of legislation in 2001 in response to the 'mad-cow' crisis, that obliges farmers to remove animal corpses from their fields immediately

Método 3 has said that some bones found in a plastic bag at the bottom of a lake in Portugal are not those of the missing British youngster Madeleine

The Spanish detective agency Método 3 has said that some bones found in a plastic bag at the bottom of a lake in Portugal are not those of the missing British youngster Madeleine McCann. The Portuguese Judicial Police confirmed that the bones are from a small animal.A search had been carried out in Arade reservoir all last week by seven divers who were working for the Portuguese lawyer, Marcos Aragao Correia. The lawyer has been working by himself at his own expense for more than a month in the search for Madeleine, and had said that he is 99% certain that the girl is dead, and that her body was thrown into the reservoir which is found some 40 kms from the apartment where the McCann family were staying in Praia da Luz last May 3. He now says he will abandon his search in the area, as he no longer has the resources to continue. He says he decided to start his own search after receiving some clues in the case three days after Madeleine vanished, and that his line of investigation coincides with that of the Spanish detective agency contracted by the McCanns.

Armed Robbery in Orihuela on Saturday night

Police in the Vega Baja are looking for three men responsible for a robbery at a petrol station near the district hospital in Orihuela on Saturday night and who left a member of staff seriously injured as they made their escape. The injured man, reported by the Información newspaper to be from Almoradí, was shot in the side and is now recovering after emergency surgery. It’s understood his life is not in danger.
The robbery came after the owner had left with the day’s takings, and all the thieves took was the money bag he was carrying around his waist. They were seen driving away in a black Volkswagen Golf, and it’s believed that their faces were also filmed on the security cameras at the petrol station.

British man in Alicante arrested at a warehouse in Villajoyosa where he was waiting to receive drugs

The Interior Ministry gave news last Friday of an operation run jointly with Customs and police in Portugal which seized more than half a ton of cocaine in port in Lisbon and led to the arrest of a British man in Alicante.He was arrested at a warehouse in Villajoyosa where he was waiting to receive the drugs which reached port in Portugal in a cargo of nappies The Ministry said 514 kilos of the drug were discovered in a cargo of paper nappies from Gambia on 29th February, which was due to be sent on to Spain. The cargo was allowed to continue on with its journey, once the drugs had been removed, and police were waiting to swoop on a warehouse on an industrial estate in Villajoyosa, Alicante province, when the lorry arrived to unload its cargo. There, a 50 year old man named by his initials of R.P.J. was taken into custody. The operation remains open and further arrests have not been ruled out.

Roshan Jamal Khan detained in Spain

Roshan Jamal Khan was detained in Spain on January 19 and kept in jail since, accused of being an Al Qaeda-linked suicide bomber. Spain has not explained his crime. This despite the Indian Ministry of External Affairs writing to Spain in March first week that Roshan was “clean”.From her, it is difficult to get the story of how the ex-student of south Mumbai’s cosmopolitan St Xavier’s College, popular as a boxer, went on to be an olive trader before being picked up from a mosque in Barcelona and branded a terrorist.“I fear of repercussions on the children. The family name is at stake. Only my two eldest children know about his arrest. The four younger ones — between seven and 12 — don’t know,” she said.
And as Roshan goes about his routine in a Spanish jail 7,000 km away, his 16-year-old son Talha will be writing his SSC Physics exam on Monday.“My exams are near, but I’ll manage. I’m worried about Talha,” said teary-eyed 17-year-old Safiya, a first-year commerce student. “He’s upset. He wants to hear father’s voice.”The government, meanwhile, ran its cold, officious lines. “The embassy was given consular access to Roshan Jamal Khan, and two officials from the Indian embassy in Madrid went to meet this gentleman in prison,” said a senior Indian diplomat in Spain. “They have confirmed that he is indeed an Indian and is in good health.”
A Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson in Delhi just said: “We are in touch with the Spanish authorities.”
Meanwhile, brother Mehboob Khan shows some of Roshan’s certificates. “Shri Khan comes from a respectable family and... bears a good moral character,” says a certificate issued by Professor AA Kazi, St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, on November 7, 1981.A letter of appreciation issued by the American Embassy in Kuwait in 1994 reads: “Your professionalism and willingness to provide assistance... is sincerely appreciated.” (This was in connection with services Roshan Khan provided while with a Kuwait-based aviation company).Roshan’s younger brother Mehboob Khan, a BJP worker for 25 years, says he called Roshan two days after he was detained on January 19 in Madrid.“His cell was switched off and it continued being so for the rest of the week. I got worried and called his brother-in-law in Barcelona. He told us about the charges. Till then neither the Spanish authorities nor our authorities informed us,” Mehboob recalled. “I then started corresponding with the Ministry of External Affairs and the PMO, which told me they are looking into the matter. I offered to go to Spain but was told it was not required at this stage.”More than a month after Jamal’s detention, the family received a letter (dated February 25) from Sujata Mehta, Ambassador of India in Madrid, stating that two officials had met Roshan and he was being looked after well and that he had asked them to inform his family members in this regard. He also conveyed a message that “his family should await a resolution of the situation”.“That is what we are doing: waiting,” said Mehboob. Mehboob is preparing to go to Spain. “I have requested the embassy to help me with a visa. I will go to fight for my brother,” he said.Their father, Babu Peshgar Khan, who runs a dairy in south Mumbai, is in shock and refused to speak.

Alfredo Marijuán, Carlos Farré , Isaac Pacheco Suárez, Eusebio Vázquez Fernández have been charged

Alfredo Marijuán and Carlos Farré have been detained in custody and Isaac Pacheco Suárez and Eusebio Vázquez Fernández were released on bail.Four inspectors from an elite unit that combats organised crime in Malaga have been charged with bribery, embezzlement, dereliction of duty, ownership of illegal arms, and revealing confidential information. Forty officers have been questioned in connection with the case, which relates to alleged payments received by Inspector Marijuán from Russian nationals for reports on police surveillance operations.The officer was also alleged to have delivered an envelope containing details about the girlfriend of a Russian who was arrested for cocaine smuggling in the US. The Costa del Sol has become the base for a dangerous breed of gang, from the UK, Russia, Colombia and eastern Europe. The Russian mafia are known to have a major presence on the Costa del Sol, exploiting lax property laws and lack of police resources to launder millions from arms dealing, drug dealing and prostitution. A Spanish interior ministry report said nearly a third of organised crime in Spain is based in the area, with 102 known gangs. Three years ago, Spain launched a major crackdown there, forming specialised units to combat the problem.

William McFarlane with four other Englishmen arrested in Benidorm

five men arrested in a swoop on drugs and illegal gambling in Spain yesterday. William McFarlane, 56, from Glasgow, was taken into custody along with four Englishmen when police targeted a suspected drugs distribution and gambling den in the centre of Benidorm. Officers recovered £77,000 as well as a quantity of illicit drugs, prescription drugs and cigarettes.

Armed Robbery in Sotogrande

There are renewed fears amongst residents of the luxury Sotogrande urbanisation in San Roque after yet another house raid, this time targeting a British family. In recent years the wealthy zone has been targeted by sophisticated criminal gangs. Sotogrande employs its own private security firm and both the Guardia Civil along with the local police have stepped up vigilance but seemingly without effect.
The details of the latest robbery were revealed by the Guardia Civil last week. The raid took place in a British-owned property close to Valderrama golf course. The thieves made off with cash, jewellery, various valuable items as well as the family’s credit cards.
The thieves entered the property at around 9pm two Thursdays ago and held the sole British occupant at gunpoint. They then laid in wait for the three other members of the family to arrive and locked them in an interior room of the house. The thieves then went through the property taking anything of value.
Once they had fled, a member of the family managed to break free in the early hours of Friday and raised the alarm with the Guardia Civil. The local police searched the area but without success. It is believed that between three and five robbers were involved and it is suggested they were part of a criminal gang from Eastern Europe.
The fact that the intruders were armed and held the family captive set the robbery apart from previous break-ins in the zone, in which raiders have either entered late at night and used a gas spray to knock out already sleeping occupants or have staked out the house then broken in when the residents went out for the evening.

Madeleine McCann: Método 3 99% certain that the girl is dead, and that her body was thrown into the reservoir

"We found two bags, one of which contains some small bones."We don't know at this stage if they are human bones. If they are, they look like they come from a child's fingers. They are too small for an adult. I can't tell you how many we found, because we didn't count them. "As soon as we made the find, we handed them over to the Portuguese authorities and the private detectives working for the McCanns."

bones were found by divers in a reservoir some 40 kms from Praia da Luz
The Spanish detective agency Método 3 say they are bring some bones found at the bottom of a lake in Portugal back to Spain to have them analysed. First reports say that the bones are more likely to be from a small animal rather than those of the missing British youngster Madeleine McCann, but they are already in the hands of the detective agency for analysis.A search has been carried out in the Arade reservoir all week by seven divers who have been working for the Portuguese lawyer, Marcos Aragao Correia. He has been working by himself for months in the search for Madeleine and says that it is 99% certain that the girl is dead, and that her body was thrown into the reservoir which is some 40 kms from the apartment where the McCann family were staying in Praia da Luz last May 3.
The lawyer says he decided to start his own search after receiving some clues in the case three days after Madeleine vanished, and that his line of investigation coincides with that of the Spanish detective agency contracted by the McCanns.