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Defendant in the Aschaffenburg district court: He is said to have been involved in drug trafficking on a large scale
Photo: Heiko Becker / dpa
A good six months after the largest find of cocaine in Bavaria to date, the trial against two men has begun in the Aschaffenburg district court.
The public prosecutor's office accuses the accused of joint illegal trading in narcotics in large quantities.
Nothing is known about the backers.
According to the prosecution, the two, some of whom had previously unknown accomplices, wanted to get around a ton of cocaine from a container in which medical products from the Caribbean were being transported via Hamburg and Aschaffenburg to Friedberg in Hesse.
Estimated street value of almost 109 million euros
But according to the public prosecutor, the police received a tip, secured the drugs in the Aschaffenburg port, sent the container on to Hesse and then lay in wait for days.
In Friedberg, the accused fell into the trap one night.
"Police, let's get out!" one of the perpetrators is said to have shouted when he noticed that the smuggled goods with an estimated street value of almost 109 million euros had disappeared from the container.
"As he remembers, shots were fired, a helicopter could be heard," defense attorney Ralf Peisl reported on Monday on behalf of his 23-year-old client about his memory of the police access on June 21, 2022.
backers unknown
Six days earlier, foreign authorities had given their Bavarian colleagues a tip: hot goods could be stored at the container terminal in Aschaffenburg.
An on-call team went out and found what they were looking for: 43 packages of cocaine were stored in a freight container between boxes full of transfusion bags.
Experts later found that the drugs had a high active ingredient content of between 76.9 and 91.6 percent, said prosecutor Sebastian Brunner.
"However, when the accused and the other previously unknown perpetrators found that the cocaine was no longer in the container, they fled."
The case against a 45-year-old accused was separated because of his illness, only the 23-year-old and a 26-year-old could contribute to the investigation at the beginning of the process and provide information about the people behind it.
The 26-year-old remained silent on the allegations, the younger defendant had his defense attorney say that he knew nothing about drug smuggling.
'He only found out about all this later from the police.
He also never wanted to be involved in a narcotics business,” said lawyer Peisl.
Rather, the trained tiler assumed that it could be a business involving possibly untaxed electronic devices.
The long-time drug user was promised 100 grams of marijuana as a wage.
For this, the 23-year-old drove a drug dealer from the Netherlands to Friedberg in Hesse last June.
»The financial offer attracted him to participate«
When he was suddenly offered 2,000 euros for his help there, he had become unsure, but did not dare to refuse his support, the lawyer read out a statement from the suspect.
With people unknown to him, they finally drove to the container.
"The financial offer tempted him to take part," said Peisl.
When the police suddenly appeared, the 23-year-old ran away without a plan or aim, but was eventually arrested.
The accused have been in custody since the attack in June, and the search for accomplices continues.
As a police officer from the State Criminal Police Office reports, the Hessian company is not involved in drug smuggling from the Dominican Republic to Friedberg.
It was not possible to determine who was ultimately to receive the explosive goods.
The masterminds are probably abroad.
A total of three days of negotiations are scheduled for the process.
bbr/dpa
