2023-10-19 15:01:21
The Antwerp investigating judge placed the seven occupants of a van which had been stopped on the IJzerlaan on Tuesday evening under arrest warrant, the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday. The seven men, heavily armed when they were arrested, are notably suspected of attempted robbery with violence. According to one of the leads followed by investigators, the suspects intended to try to recover a large shipment of cocaine seized by customs.
According to the prosecution, the facts are probably linked to a load of around 10 tonnes of cocaine discovered by customs in a container at the port of Antwerp. The drugs were hidden in a shipment of soy flour. “For practical reasons, the container was transported to a hangar in Kalmthout, where the cocaine packets were extracted from the soy flour cargo“, specifies the prosecution. “The drugs were then moved under police escort and temporarily stored in a location pending destruction. Shortly afterwards, armed men appeared in front of the Kalmthout hangar and threatened a man present there. The attackers finally fled in a van.“.
It is therefore possible that this van was the one that was intercepted by the Antwerp police a few moments later. It was a vehicle registered in the Netherlands and the seven occupants were aged between 22 and 35. Three small arms were also found in the vehicle.
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