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Dozens sentenced to prison in Belgium’s biggest ever drug smuggling trial: “Your honor, I played, I lost.”

October 29, 2024 Benjamin Hughes

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A Belgian court jailed dozens of people Tuesday in the country’s biggest ever drug trial, with the ringleaders sentenced to up to 17 years behind bars.

More than 120 defendants from Belgium, Albania, Colombia and North Africa were accused of having participated in a multinational cocaine and cannabis trafficking enterprise after investigators cracked encrypted messaging apps. According to the Brussels Times, it’s the largest correctional trial in Belgium’s history.

The case shone a spotlight on Belgium’s role as Europe’s gateway for drugs.

Netherlands, Germany and France before being sold across Europe. Customs seized 116 tons of cocaine in the port of Antwerp in 2023, setting a record for the second year in a row.

The case was in part based on evidence uncovered after investigators cracked the covert Sky ECC and EncroChat apps, which the gangs used to communicate.

By breaking into the messaging tools, police said they were able to peer into the unguarded planning and carrying out of drug smuggling operations.

The sentences were handed out about three months after police on Friday announced the takedown of a major network transporting Latin American cocaine into Europe by boat in an international operation involving 50 arrests across eight countries. Around that same time,

authorities in Paraguay announced the largest cocaine seizure in the country’s history, after officials were surprised to find more than 4 tons of the drug stashed inside a shipment of sugar bound for Belgium. 

Blow to drug smugglers or “publicity stunt”?

Belgian authorities have portrayed the trial as the latest blow delivered to drug smuggling gangs.

But some defense lawyers decried it as a “publicity stunt” accusing prosecutors of having bundled together disconnected cases into one eye-catching trial.

“People were artificially linked to each other when they had no connection,” Guerni’s lawyer Gilles Vanderbeck told AFP before the verdicts were pronounced.

Prosecutors insist there was a “structure and hierarchy” between the various criminal groups involved and clear illegal commercial links.

Some suspects were acquitted, while dozens of others received prison terms ranging from a few months to more than 10 years.

The judgment was initially expected on September 2 but was postponed after an objection by one of the defendants.

Source: cbsnews.com