Prague, March 9 (CTK) – The police have detained six men who played the role of “gardeners” in a drug case in a Europol-sponsored operation in Central Bohemia, operation commander Ales Pavlik told jorunalists yesterday, adding that the men grew marijuana for Spanish organisers.
Police detained 25 people, most of them citizens of Serbia, in the Czech Republic and Spain.
In the Czech Republic, the police detained five Serbs and one Czech in the operation codenamed Mannequin. Four of them had an invented identity.
The operation, in which 120 police participated in the Czech SRpublic, was launched on March 1 and it included six home searches, in which four marijuana growing facilities were uncovered.
Three of the detained men face up to 12 years in prison and three others ten years. All have been taken into custody.
In the home searches, the police seized 1418 marijuana plants in various stages of growth, almost 35 kilograms of dried marijuana ready for distribution and an equivalent of about half a million crowns in various currencies, mainly euros.
Pavlik said the drug was most probably destined for customers in Germany or the Netherlands.
Europol wrote yesterday that the operation was launched thanks to cooperation of the Serbian police who warned their Spanish colleagues that a gang, originally active in Novi Sad, has moved to Spain.
Its members were also responsible for a robbery and two murders.
The perpetrators caught in the Czech Republic are only persecuted for drug delicts.
($1=24.541 crowns)
