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CRIME

Cocaine worth €25 million found in Aldi banana boxes in north Germany

A record amount of the class A drug cocaine – around 500 kilograms – was discovered in crates of bananas near supermarkets in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

Published: 5 April 2019 08:39 CEST
Cocaine worth €25 million found in Aldi banana boxes in north Germany
Bunches of bananas. Photo: DPA

Staff at six branches of the Aldi supermarket chain in Rostock as well as the Aldi logistics centre in Jarmen, near the Baltic Sea islands of Usedom and Rügen, discovered a total of around half a ton of cocaine hidden in banana boxes on Wednesday.

SEE ALSO: Germany is Europe's drug capital, sewage system research reveals

The value of the drugs could have a street value of around €25 million, according to reports.

According to Harald Nowack, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Rostock, it is still impossible to say exactly how big the find actually is.

“We don't have the final quantity yet, because we simply haven't been able to evaluate it yet, because of the quantity,” Nowack told NDR 1 Radio MV.

But one thing is certain: “This magnitude is really unique for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.” 

Initial investigations have found the discovery amounts to at least 500 kg of cocaine.

Fruit crates across Germany searched

After the discovery in the northern state, police searched for similar cases in other areas of Germany. By Thursday afternoon, however, nothing had been reported outside Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, said a spokesman for the Rostock public prosecutor's office.

German media have been reporting on the find.

The investigation has been taken over by a team made up of members from the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and the Hamburg Customs Investigation Office.

The banana cartons with the cocaine packets allegedly arrived by ship from Latin America. For tactical reasons, the authorities spokesman did not say which ports they were shipped through.

According to the LKA, this is probably the largest amount of cocaine ever found in the northeast state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

A company spokesman for Aldi, meanwhile, confirmed that a logistics centre and branches of the supermarket chain were affected. He did not give further details.

SEE ALSO: Supermarket worker finds loads of cocaine in banana crates

Coke in fruit common

Cocaine is discovered fairly regularly in fruit crates and shipping containers: a total of 87 kg was found last week in supermarkets in the Rhine-Main region, and a ton was discovered in Hamburg in November 2018. Meanwhile, 120 kg of cocaine was found in Leverkusen in December 2017.

In February, the Public Prosecutor's Office in Landshut brought charges against eight men who allegedly smuggled two tons of cocaine from Ecuador to Germany within eight months.

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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