Four members and followers of the motorcycle club Outlaws were arrested yesterday evening in an extensive police operation spanning several municipalities. That same evening they were brought before a judge in Reykjanes District Court, where one-week custody over them was demanded.
Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
The suspects are three men and one woman, the leader of Outlaws included. He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2001 for smuggling 5,000 ecstasy pills to the country. The judge has yet to decide whether he is to be taken into custody but agreed to the custody demand in regards to the other suspects, Fréttablaðið reports.
The operation began with a raid on Wednesday evening when a large number of police officers barged into seven buildings, including homes and clubs in Hafnarfjörður, Mosfellsbær, Eyrarbakki, Reykjanesbær, Vogar and two other locations in the capital region.
Sixteen individuals were arrested in the raid, most of whom were at a meeting in the Outlaws’ headquarters. Three were released shortly afterwards but 13 suspects, 11 men and two women, were taken into custody and questioned yesterday.
Most of these people are members of Outlaws or related clubs and have a history with the police. Several are among those arrested in a different police raids two weeks ago, also connected with Outlaws. In that raid, seven persons were arrested and one sentenced to custody.
In Wednesday’s raid, police confiscated several tens of grams of illicit substances, steroids, brewing equipment, moonshine, loot and various types of blades.
Apart from the so-called ‘Operation Papey’ which took place in Djúpivogur, East Iceland, in 2009, in which around 100 people were involved, and crowd control operations such as during demonstrations, Wednesday’s raid was the most extensive operation Icelandic police have ever undertaken.
Almost 80 police officers were involved, including armed members of the National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police’s Special Forces, customs officers with specially-trained track dogs and dogs trained for tracing explosives.
Click here to read about the Outlaws raid several weeks ago.
ESA
