The Narcanization of Europe > Astonishing growth in drug smuggling into Germany

 

By Matthias Bartsch, Jürgen Dahlkamp, Jörg Diehl, Tobias Großekemper, Roman Lehberger, Claas Meyer-Heuer und Ansgar Siemens

24.10.2024, 08.29 Uhr

It’s shortly before 6:30 p.m., and his girlfriend wants to know when he is going to finally come home. Back to Eitorf, a small town near Bonn. Habib I. is at an Autobahn rest stop some 300 kilometers away. He just told his girlfriend a few hours before that there was something he still had to do. Now, she’s asking again. When? Before midnight, he responds, hopefully. And then Habib I. makes a promise that so many others have made before him, even if they don’t really believe it themselves. That this will be his last deal. Just this last one, and that will be "the end.” But his girlfriend knows him. Yeah sure, he’s saying that now. But in five months, it will start all over again, she says.

Five? Not even one month passed before the next cocaine delivery, and Habib I. was again involved, if one can believe the police file. A case file that mentions "narcotics in not small quantities,” which could be the understatement of the century for drug investigators. The intercepted phone calls and surveillance photos paint a picture of the largest known amount of cocaine ever smuggled into Germany. One gang, 10 deliveries, 35.5 tons of cocaine, street value: 2.6 billion euros. A mountain of blow of a size never before seen in Europe – though likely only the tip of the iceberg. Investigators are certain that they haven’t come close to intercepting all of it.

In May, the authorities made their move, making seven arrests, including the 30-year-old Habib I. Düsseldorf prosecutors consider the Bulgarian national to be an important player in this gang that elevated cocaine smuggling to a whole new dimension. Habib I. is thought to have been the leader of the team assigned to extract the narcotics out of the containers once it arrived in the Port of Hamburg from South America.

Apparently also on August 17, 2023 – the day on which he promised his girlfriend that he was going to finally get out of the game. That afternoon, a truck laden with a container drove out of the port and onto the autobahn toward Bremen, followed by a Mercedes that Habib I. is thought to have been driving. The container was full of tropical wood, exclusive material for yachts and villas – according to the papers. Which makes it all the odder that the convoy ended up at a farmhouse at the edge of the tiny village of Kuhstedt – a place so dilapidated that it looked as though the farmer had long ago given up his battle with the soil and with the banks.

Five men were waiting to carry the wooden planks into a barn. The sixth, though, was apparently waiting in the Rhineland for news about what else might be in the container: Ümit D., 39, thought to be the leader of the gang in Germany. A man who used to be a member of the outlawed motorcycle club Hells Angels.

By 9:08 p.m., the men in Kuhstedt had seen enough. No cocaine, not a single gram. They closed up the container. Exactly 10 minutes later, a surveillance team of criminal investigators were watching as Ümit D. parked in front of a McDonald’s in Rhineland. How he jumped out of his BMW and walked agitatedly back and forth, yelling into his mobile phone. A coincidence? Or was this the moment that he realized that customs officials had already searched the container that morning back in the port and confiscated the goods? Not just a couple kilos, nor a couple hundred. It was 7.2 tons of coke worth hundreds of millions of euros. All of it gone.

Today, Ümit D. is sitting behind bars awaiting his trial. Habib I.’s girlfriend also no longer has to wonder when he is coming home. Not before midnight. And not after midnight either. It could be a couple of years.

SITUATION REPORT

In 2013, German officials managed to confiscate one ton of cocaine, five in 2016, another 10 in 2019 and then 20 in 2022. Last year it was 43 tons. Investigators presume that in the best-case scenario, they are only able to intercept 30 percent of the deliveries, but it could be as low as 10 percent.

Please continue reading on Der Speigle at: 

It’s so much cocaine – 35.5 tons 

Europe > France's other problem - drugs

 

As America is finessing its way into the colonization of Europe, France included, and Islam is taking a more violent track to conquer the great historical country, there's another player in the mix. Drug cartels are slithering their way into France in an effort to turn the country into a Narco State, as they have done with most of Central and South America...

Canteleu, France

Small-town French mayor and deputy go on trial for complicity in drug trafficking

The trial on Monday of a small-town mayor and her deputy for complicity in drug trafficking appears to illustrate the scale of France's drug dealing problem, highlighting how drug barons have encroached upon some rural French communities and even held sway over their elected representatives. 

Issued on: 05/06/2024 - 18:14

4 min

By:Louis CHAHUNEAU

France is "submerged by drug trafficking", according to a particularly alarming investigative report delivered by a group of French senators on May 7.

Just one week later, a notorious French drug baron was freed by gunmen in a spectacular attack on a prison van that killed two police officers, wounded three others, and shocked the nation.

Now the story of a small-town mayor on trial for complicity with drug trafficking appears to illustrate the scale of France's drug dealing problem. 

Nineteen people went on trial in Paris on Monday in connection with drug trafficking in the northern French town of Canteleu, home to 14,000 residents in the Normandy region.  

The defendants include the town's former Socialist mayor, Mélanie Boulanger, elected in 2014, and her deputy, Hasbi Colak. Both are accused of “complicity in drug trafficking” of cocaine, heroin and cannabis.

A town under control

The Canteleu affair began on September 25, 2019, when police officers stopped two men in an underground parking lot in the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. One man had just supplied the other with 2 kg of 80% pure cocaine in exchange for €50,000 in cash. Yassine D., aged 34, was stopped at the wheel of a Citroën Berlingo registered to a kebab restaurant in Canteleu. The manager of that restaurant was none other than Colak, who was then Canteleu's deputy mayor in charge of economic development.

Canteleu, in Normandy, has been the centre of a vast drug trafficking operation run by the Meziani family for some fifteen years, according to the police.

Police investigators estimate that the Mezianis make more than €10 million profit a year from their business, largely due to the import of cocaine. “There's a very significant influx of cocaine into France, so the product has to be able to flow. In some areas, cocaine has supplanted cannabis," said Jérôme Durain, a Socialist Party senator and co-chairman of the commission of inquiry into drug trafficking.

In Canteleu, part of this trafficking took place in the Cité Verte, a housing project in a poor neighbourhood where the Meziani family were raised. Colak knew some members of the Meziani family and they used his position as an elected official to facilitate their business.

According to court documents consulted by FRANCE 24, on December 10, 2019, Colak informed then mayor Boulanger that the “bosses” of the Cité Rose, another housing project considered a hotbed of drug trafficking, were unhappy at not being informed about the installation of video surveillance cameras.

On January 29, a drug dealer was arrested in the area, sparking the traffickers' wrath. Boulanger appeared to apologise to Colak over a wiretapped phone line: “They didn't tell me they were going to make the arrest so quickly.”

On February 7, a new arrest set off a firestorm between the traffickers and the mayor's team, who were accused of having “given the green light”. Once again, the mayor was asked where she stood: “I'm willing to work with them (...) You can say it comes from ‘people in the church’, just don’t say ‘it’s coming from the priest'.”

After another police operation in a bar frequented by drug dealers, one of the kingpins actually used Colak's direct telephone line to negotiate with the mayor. “After a long conversation, Mélanie Boulanger agreed to call the police commissioner to stop the patrols,” the investigators wrote in the referral order accessed by FRANCE 24.

“It was clear that Hasbi Colak had links with the Canteleu traffickers. He relayed to Mélanie Boulanger their requests, their recriminations and sometimes pleaded their case."

And he was getting paid by the taxpayers of Canteleu all the while.

Standing alone against drug barons

After a three-year investigation, Boulanger and Colak were indicted at the end of April 2022 for complicity in drug trafficking. They deny most of the charges against them. Since her election in 2014, Boulanger had publicly alerted national authorities to the rise in drug trafficking in her city, as reported in Le Monde. “Traffickers and troublemakers are steadily gaining ground,” she wrote in 2017 to the then French interior minister, Christophe Castaner.

Other letters followed, to no avail. The lack of response to her letters raises questions as to whether Boulanger gave in to pressure from traffickers due to a lack of support from the authorities.

At the time of her indictment, Boulanger, who has since resigned, read a statement to the judge in which she underlined her isolation as an elected official in her fight against crime. Presumed innocent, like her deputy, she is expected to explain herself more fully at her trial.

As for the Meziani family at the heart of the affair, one of the brothers, Aziz, is being tried in absentia. He has sought refuge in Morocco, where he has built a lavish villa and is reported to live a quiet life. And for good reason: Morocco rarely extradites French-Moroccan citizens.

Another brother, Montacer, did not appear in court on June 5.  "Noting that Montacer Meziani's hospitalisation prevented his appearance in court," the court ordered a medical examination to determine whether he would be fit to stand trial by July 11, after which date he would automatically be released, the legal time limits authorising his continued pre-trial detention having expired.

But prosecutors fear that once out of prison, Montacer would find refuge in Morocco like his brother Aziz, the other presumed head of the network.

An older brother of Aziz and Montacer Meziani, who was sentenced in 2004 to ten years' imprisonment for drug trafficking in another case, is also presumed to be on the run in Morocco, the court recalled in its summary of the facts on Tuesday.

(With AFP)

Mexico - Narco State > Where it used to be safe to be a tourist

 

Fourth body discovered in well where US, Australian

surfers were reportedly found dead in Mexico

By 

Social Links forDana Kennedy

Published May 4, 2024, 4:10 p.m. ET

A fourth body has been discovered in a 50-foot deep well in Baja California, Mexico where an American and two Australian surfers were found dead, authorities revealed.

Meanwhile, one of the three suspects taken into custody by Mexican authorities reportedly had one of the tourists’ phones on her when she was arrested — and all three allegedly had drugs on them.

Mexican officials have not officially confirmed that the three bodies found in a well hole last week are Georgia resident Jack Carter Rhoad, 30, and Australian brothers Callum, 33, and Jake Robinson, 30.

But two news outlets, Border Report and FOX 5 San Diego, citing a source in the Baja California Attorney General’s office, say the dead bodies are those of the three missing surfers.

6

Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson are believed to be two of the three

dead bodies discovered in Mexico on Friday.Callum Robinson/Instagram

They were believed to have been camping out at a popular surf spot known as La Bocana in the beautiful Mexican countryside — about 130 miles south of San Diego, when they were reported missing last Saturday.

Police later arrested Jesús Gerardo Garcia Cota, alias El Kekas, his partner Ari Gisel García Cota, and Jesus’ brother Cristian Alejandro Garcia.

All had methamphetamine and other illegal narcotics on them at the time of their arrest, according to local news blogs Talk Baja and Zeta Tijuana.

6

One of the three suspects taken into custody by Mexican authorities reportedly had one of the tourists’ phones on her when she was arrested — and all three allegedly had drugs on them.KTLA5

Ari Gisel Garcia Cota, 23, was allegedly nabbed with one of the surfer’s phones as well as the drugs.

The fourth body was identified as a ranch owner who was reported missing two weeks ago, officials said.

He owned the property where the bodies were found, the attorney general said.

The trio were on a surfing vacation in the port city of Ensenada, just 80 miles south of San Diego, a trip they were documenting on social media until last Saturday, when the posts mysteriously stopped and they failed to arrive at an Airbnb.

Stevenson University in Baltimore issued a statement mourning the death of Callum Robinson, who graduated in 2015 and was a star lacrosse player at the school and then played for the Premier Lacrosse League.