International Drug Ring Trial Resumes: Morocco-Belgium Trafficking Case Back in Brussels Court

The Brussels criminal court has decided to resume the trial of the international drug trafficking between Morocco, Spain and Belgium originating from a fruit and vegetable company in Saint-Josse, on February 2, 2022, reports Belga. This decision was made following an observation made during the deliberation: certain exhibits relating to the Spanish part of the investigation were not accessible at the registry. The reopening of the debates will allow the federal prosecutor’s office to remedy this problem. Several defense lawyers had in the meantime pointed out several shortcomings or procedural errors in the investigation file.

In 2018, a large quantity of drugs with an estimated market value of eight million euros had been seized. This was the first seizure. Subsequently, fourteen people were arrested and are being prosecuted for international drug trafficking. Among them are people who are also being prosecuted for a hostage-taking with torture and sequestration in a villa in Marbella, on the Costa del Sol, in Spain, on the night of April 1 to 2, 2019. They all belong to a criminal organization specialized in the transport of narcotics from Morocco to Spain and then to Belgium, under cover, among other things, of a fictitious fruit and vegetable company, which would be based in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode.

The organization was well-established, using trucks and warehouses in Belgium and Spain to transport and store the goods, the use of "cryptophones", and the use of fictitious commercial companies as a front for the trafficking, at the head of which were straw men, the investigators specify.