display
Hanover / Celle (dpa) - Massive blow against drug smugglers: In a cross-border raid, investigators from the State Criminal Police Office of Lower Saxony arrested 20 suspects.
The arrests took place in the Hanover area, in the Celle area in Lower Saxony, in Halle in Saxony-Anhalt, Hamburg and Latvia, as the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office announced.
At the same time, 65 objects were searched.
The investigators accuse the more than 40 suspects of having imported tons of drugs from southern Europe and sold them in Germany since at least 2017, with varying degrees of involvement.
In addition to cannabis products, the perpetrators had smuggled cocaine from South America on a "significant scale".
Covert investigations by a joint investigation group of investigators from the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office and the Hanover Customs Investigation Office in cooperation with the Hanover public prosecutor had led to the raid.
display
The Hanover public prosecutor applied for "a large number" of search and arrest orders.
Around 1000 deployed forces finally carried out this.
According to the Interior Ministry in Hanover, the perpetrators also traded in firearms.
The Cellesche Zeitung had previously reported that the searches had been going on since the early hours of the morning.
At first it was not known whether the searched objects were private apartments, company premises or warehouses.
The LKA Lower Saxony announced that the results of the searches would first be evaluated.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210303-99-672595 / 2