A 45-year-old man from Capelle aan den IJssel has been sentenced to four years in prison for transporting 12 kilos of hard drugs. A 30-year-old Danish man should serve a prison sentence of 3.5 years for the same, according to the Public Prosecution Service (OM).
The men were discovered on September 12 during a surveillance in the border region near Emmen. The officers saw a car with a license plate that was registered in the police system. The police kept an eye on the car. The car drove to Emmen via Klazienaveen.
The officers saw that the car was stationary in the Huygensstraat in Emmen. A remote area with hardly any buildings. A second car with a German license plate parked next to it. The drivers spoke briefly and a bag was transferred. The car with the German license plate drove away again and was followed by officers. Their colleagues arrested the driver of the other car, the 45-year-old suspect.
During the chase, the driver of the car with the German license plate jumped out of the car. It was the 30-year-old man from Denmark who ran across a field with a bag in his arms and stumbled. The bag was filled with 9 kilos of cocaine and 2 kilos of heroin. “The street value is in the hundreds of thousands,” the prosecutor said.
Both men said they did not know each other. The Dane was approached in Amsterdam with the request to deliver a package. He received 4,400 euros for this. The 45-year-old suspect received 3,000 euros for the job. The man in his forties drove via Zoetermeer, Utrecht towards Emmen. He received instructions along the way via a telephone that he had been given.
The clients remained the great unknowns. Both suspects said they did not know what was in the bag. The Dane was thinking of blocks of hashish. “They play dumb,” the prosecutor said. The men were guided by the money “and they took the significant chance that this was an illegal job.”
Due to his extensive criminal record, the man in his forties received a higher sentence. The man had only just been released after a four-year prison sentence in Belgium for drugs. The lawyers argued for (partial) acquittal because the suspect could not have known that there were hard drugs in the bag. They also asked the judge to take personal circumstances into account.
The verdict will be announced on December 24.