Hash (26 page)

In January 2011, police in the city of Sharjah made their biggest drug haul in 20 years after seizing 2,534 kilograms of hash at a local port following a tip-off and sting operation. The drugs were found in a ship transiting through Khorfakhan waters. Police said they were tipped off when the smugglers began searching for a local buyer for their hash.

Police eventually arrested twelve Iranians and two Pakistanis in connection with the bust. The boat was brought to shore by a tugboat, and the suspects confessed to planning to smuggle the drugs into the UAE.

The US continues to pile pressure on many hash-producing countries to eradicate all cannabis harvesting, and the world’s most powerful nation regularly passes some of the heaviest sentences in the world for those connected to the hash business. The Oklahoma Senate recently passed a bill that
would mandate a sentence of up to life in prison for making hashish out of marijuana.

Vietnam became renowned for its high-quality hash during its 10-year war with the United States, but the communist government in power since the war ended in 1975 has some of the toughest drug trafficking laws in the world. Despite this, buying pot in Hanoi is ‘very easy’, and it costs about 100,000 VND – about $6 – a joint.

In 2009 five Chinese men, ranging in ages from 42 to 57, were sentenced to death in northern Vietnam for trafficking almost eight tons of hash destined for Canada. The cannabis came from Pakistan and was about to be shipped to North America through the Vietnamese port of Mong Cai when Vietnamese customs agents swooped.

• Afghan police in the province of Kandahar seized what is reckoned to be the biggest stockpile of hash ever recovered, in 2008, with a wholesale value of $400 million. The hash weighed 261 tonnes – as much as 30 double-decker London buses – and was found hidden in several trenches. The region is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Pakistani border.

• US Federal drug agents uncovered 50,000 pounds of marijuana hidden in a ‘nondescript’ house in Queens, New York, in 2009 as part of a crackdown on a drug-smuggling operation in neighbouring Canada. The street value was $150 million. Ten people were arrested.

• In Afghanistan in 2007, coalition forces uncovered £200 million worth of hash buried deep in an underground
complex of trenches and bunkers. The haul was reportedly meant to help finance the Taliban in their war against the West.

• At the port of Riyadh, in Saudia Arabia, in 2010, almost 12,000 pounds of hashish worth in the region of $35 million was seized. Seven East Asian men and an Arab male were arrested in connection with the bust. Saudi Arabia is governed by Sharia law – which prescribes the death penalty for convicted drug traffickers.

• Law enforcement authorities in Houston, Texas, seized more than 19,000 pounds of hash stored inside two yellow school buses in a remote area south west of the city in March 2007. US Immigration and Customs agents estimated that the hash haul had a street value of almost $50 million.

• The Mexico-based ‘Victor Emillio Cazares-Gastellum’ drug trafficking gang was busted with 27,229 pounds of marijuana by US authorities in 2007. That and other drugs found by agents were given a conservative street value of $45.2 million. More than 400 members of the cartel were arrested and authorities confiscated $6 million in property assets, 100 weapons and 94 vehicles.

• A US Coast Guard unit discovered 26,000 pounds of hash aboard a 63-foot yacht
Arrakis
, in November, 1984. It was the largest West Coast bust up to that time and worth in excess of $10 million on the open market.

• In October, 2009, members of the British Army’s Black Watch regiment in Afghanistan seized six tons of hash – including a block the size of a football pitch – during a three-day aviation assault mission to clear insurgent equipment from the Lakari Bazaar in the Garmsir district of American-controlled southern Helmand Province. The hash was said to be worth ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ on the open market.

• A raid by the US Drug Enforcement Agency and Afghan counter-narcotics agents in July, 2012, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province uncovered a massive underground bunker that contained approximately 3,125 kilograms of pre-packaged hashish and another 2,500 kilograms of marijuana worth more than $200 million on the open market.

• Canadian police in late 2010 arrested eight people and seized more than 43 tons of hashish with an estimated street value of CAN $860 million after raids in four different countries.

• Three Israelis were arrested in the British port of Southampton in April, 2008, on suspicion of trying to smuggle over six tons of hash into the country. Police at the time called it the UK’s largest ever hash haul. The hash had been purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars and was expected to fetch more than $15 million on the open market.

• Mexican hash traffickers built their own version of an underground railroad in 2011 to transport cannabis across the California–Mexico border. After following a suspicious truck to a Tijuana warehouse, police found the entrance to the freshly-excavated 1,800-foot long tunnel complete with a light rail system that smoothly delivered hash through a crawlspace on the Californian side. All in all, authorities seized 30 tons of hash worth $20 million.

On 26 November 1983 six armed robbers escaped with £28 million worth of gold bullion from a Brink’s-Mat warehouse at London’s Heathrow Airport. The heist changed the face of British crime for ever. In the following years, many of those involved, innocent and guilty alike, have been sent to an early grave. Two decades on, the death toll is still rising.

Nobody is better placed than Wensley Clarkson to track the vicious, violent and unexpected waves that followed in its wake, or bring to life its cast of larger-than-life characters. From small-time crime in south-east London, to ‘the heist of the century’ and its bloody consequences, Wensley Clarkson’s
The Curse of Brink’s-Mat
is an epic tale of villainy, gold and revenge.

Available from:
www.amazon.co.uk
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Among Bali’s drug dealers ‘It’s snowing in Bali’ is code that the paradise island is full of cocaine. For the men who run the country’s drug empires, it’s time to get rich and party hard.

Snowing in Bali
is the story of the drug scene that’s made Bali one of the world’s most important destinations in the global distribution of narcotics. Kathryn Bonella, bestselling author of
Hotel K
, has been given extraordinary access into the lives of the biggest players in Bali’s drug world. She charts their rise to incredible wealth and power, and their drug-fuelled lifestyles: filled with orgies, outrageous extravagance and surfing.

From the highs of multi-million dollar deals to the desperate lows of death row in an Indonesian high security jail,
Snowing in Bali
is a unique, uncensored insight into a hidden world.

Available from:
www.amazon.co.uk
www.quercusbooks.co.uk