PALERMO (ITALPRESS) – State Police in Palermo discovered a real laboratory for the production and packaging of narcotics. Two nationals of Nigerian nationality, 39-year-old O.U. and 49-year-old U.N.F., ended up in handcuffs, responsible for the crime of production and distribution of narcotics. The deep knowledge of the criminal dynamics of the city’s territory allowed the “Falcons” of the “Contrasto al Crimine Diffuso” section of the Mobile Squad, to locate the apartment and seize about 4 and a half kilograms of pure heroin and cocaine, which, if placed on the market of the drug markets, would have yielded, at retail, figures not far from six hundred thousand euros. The officers in “civilian clothes” and aboard motorcycles, always careful to mingle with the many frequenters of the city center streets, noticed in Ballarò, the presence aboard a scooter of a Nigerian citizen in the past subjected to control and suspected of dealing drugs. With “discretion,” the policemen followed him and reached the threshold of a building where the foreigner entered and then succeeded within a short distance. The cops intimated “Stop Police” to the foreigner who did not comply and launched himself into a desperate escape, again on a scooter. Before being blocked by other patrols that had meanwhile arrived to help, the foreigner did in time to swallow something, as distinctly noticed by personnel in the area. A set of keys was found on him, one of which turned out to be connected to the building in question. With that key, the officers, imagining finding accomplices of the man and believing they were taking advantage of the surprise effect, gained access to the apartment, actually surprising a compatriot of the stopped man, at work inside an actual laboratory for processing and packaging cocaine and heroin.
Approximately 3.5 kilograms of heroin and one kilogram of cocaine, very pure, were found and seized. Some of the narcotics were already packaged and enclosed in hundreds of ovules of varying weights. Also found and seized were all the processing equipment such as cellophane bags, blenders, knives, flat spoons and precision scales, as well as the sum of nearly sixty thousand euros and as many as 12 cell phones. Contextually with the access to the apartment, deeming it likely that one of the two apprehended, the Nigerian caught, chased and blocked on the road, had ingested drug ova, it was considered to subject him to appropriate diagnostic tests that found the suspect.
Under inpatient treatment, the man, in the hours after being apprehended by police officers, reportedly expelled more than 70 heroin ova. In view of the large number of expelled ova, it is unlikely that the foreigner had ingested all of them at the time of the officers’ pursuit and out of fear of detection. It is more plausible that he had already resorted to “intracorporeal transport,” a technique already widely experimented with by foreign criminals and a mode with a high risk index related to the potential loss of impermeability of the envelopes and their consequent absorption, in order to carry out the transport safely and circumvent possible police checks. The arrests were validated by the Judicial Authority.
photo: state police press office
(ITALPRESS).
