Es war die größte Menge Kokain, die je in Deutschland gefunden wurde: 1,3 Tonnen stellten Hamburger Ermittler im April im Hamburger Hafen sicher. SPIEGEL ONLINE rekonstruiert, wie die Polizei der Schmugglerbande auf die Spur kam.

Hamburg - Am Anfang war ein Gerücht. Es gebe auffallend viel Kokain in Hamburg, hieß es im Herbst des vergangenen Jahres. Die Preise purzelten, die Händler auf der Straße sprachen darüber und viele Polizisten spitzten die Ohren. "Irgendetwas ist im Gange", sagten sie sich.

Doch wer brachte die Massen an Schnee in die Stadt? Und wie?

spiegel.de

via

IN an operation carried out in Tenerife, Melilla, Malaga and Almeria, Guardia Civil have seized 2,666 kilos of cocaine. The drugs had come from South America and were destined for Europe via Morocco.

They were intercepted on a Spanish sailing boat which had left from Tenerife. This is the largest drugs haul using this particular route, and one of the most important of recent years.

euroweeklynews.com

Airports anti-drug chief Col. Jose Piedrahita says that Colombian authorities found the unusual statue during a routine security check by anti-drug agents Friday in a mail warehouse at Bogota's international airport.

The 36-centimeter-high (14-inch-high) statue was inside a box headed for Madrid, Spain. The statue was painted gold with green stripes on the base.

Piedrahita said Saturday that laboratory tests confirmed the cup was made of 11 kilos (24 pounds) of cocaine mixed with acetone or gasoline to make it moldable.

cbsnews.com
jamaicaobserver.com
bbc.co.uk

The drugs, which originated in Panama, Colombia and Argentina, were hidden in shipments of scrap metal, flowers and in a large safe.

typicallyspanish.com

The cultivation of the raw material for cocaine has declined significantly in Colombia, the world’s leading producer of coca, but the situation in Peru remains worrying with the amount of the narcotic grown there consistently rising, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported today.

Overall, crop surveys show the amount of coca grown in the four Andean countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru dropping by five per cent from 167,000 hectares in 2008 to 158,000 hectares in 2009, according to the agency.

isria.com
old zack

The recent seizure of more than two tonnes of cocaine, worth an estimated $1bn (about £675m) in The Gambia has once again shone a light on West Africa as a major transit point for narcotics making their way from Latin America to Europe.

However, in the last three years, seizures of narcotics have gone down in the region. The latest figures available from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show that 5.5 tonnes of cocaine were seized in West and Central Africa in 2007 whereas an unconfirmed 15 tonnes passed through a year previously.

bbc.co.uk

Teresa Matos, 37, an Angolan-born steward from Contsworth Court, Gateshead, picked up 4.94kg of 100 per cent pure cocaine while HMS Manchester had docked at the port of Cartagena in Colombia, South America, in July last year.

telegraph.co.uk