A 37-year-old man from Halsteren, who performed odd jobs for Colombians who work in drug labs here, gave a glimpse into that world before the court in Breda. He was silent about other criminals. Because his boss had warned him: if he chatted he would be shot in the head. The prosecutor demanded four years against the man.
The man was spotted in early March 2020 by undercover agents in the polder near Lepelstraat. They observed a possible drug lab in a cowshed. The officers saw a Hyundai drive off the yard and noted the license plate, for later.
party tent
A police raid followed. Three Colombian “cooks” lived inside. They squeezed out cardboard fruit boxes in which cocaine had been dissolved. That is a well-known smuggling method.
During the search of this ‘coke laundry’, officers found brown bread from a store in Bergen op Zoom. One brown bread had been bought that day, by a man from Halsteren, with a Hyundai. This is how the police tracked down the suspect.
chats
Meanwhile, the police encountered the suspect elsewhere: among the millions of messages from the hacked telephone service Encrochat. He chatted about coke labs.
On his trial Friday, the Halsternaar admitted that he was. “The man who directed me was someone from Antwerp. I knew him from the disco. He treated, had prestige and respect. He said I would be well rewarded.”
Secret
The Halsternaar said he found it interesting. “I was there in Lepelstraat, for hours”. Amigo, they called him. He arranged materials and food for the Colombians. “The cooks are flown in especially for this.”
De Halsternaar explained why only Colombians and also Mexicans process coke here with us. “The people who put it in there, get it out here. There’s a kind of lock on it, something chemical. He also knows how to get it out.” They keep that ‘key’ to wash coke from cardboard, for example.
‘They shoot them in the head’
After the events in Lepelstraat, the man from Halsteren walked free for a while. He was called to account in Antwerp. “We ran out of cooks. They said, you’ve been talking. That was a very threatening conversation.” Later he added something more: people who talk ‘they shoot them in the head’.
Still, the suspect continued his drug work. “Once you’re in that world, you don’t just get out.”
shawarma
The police found out that he sometimes transported Colombians and peddled raw materials in Winterswijk. He was involved in a coke lab in Berkel en Rodenrijs. He supplied a coke lab in Poortvliet with stuff from a garage in Steenbergen. Until the lab exploded. A flock of sheep standing next to it was killed. “Shawarma,” was the response in one of the Encrochat groups the drug criminals had.
With confessions about his own role, the suspect hopes for a reduced sentence. After his trial, he said he is happy that everything is over. More people are coming to court in this case, such as a man who is said to have been at the lab in Sint Willebrord (November 2019).
This network has been dismantled, others are still running. Near Steenbergen, the police discovered a coke lab with ten Colombians this spring.
ALSO READ: Cocaine lab in cowshed: prison for Colombians who worked there
The Spanish police were involved in the Lepelstraat investigation and made a video about coke laundries: