Status: 10/21/2021 11:55 a.m.
The police searched buildings in several NRW cities on Thursday morning. Including in Gelsenkirchen, Bochum and Duisburg. The suspicion: drug cultivation and trade.
Some of the special units used chainsaws to gain access to the building in the early hours of the morning. There were searches in several cities in North Rhine-Westphalia – as it is said from security circles, around 200 forces were deployed – in Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Herne, Lohmar, Wiehl, Iserlohn and Engelskirchen. It’s about drug cultivation and trafficking on a large scale.
Marijuana plantations discovered
On site, the investigators then discovered, as suspected in advance, several mariuhana plantations. In the raid that the police in Hagen there were a total of seven provisional arrests, including in Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the raids were triggered by so-called Encrochat data. The messenger service is mainly used by criminals. The police in the Netherlands and France managed to siphon off more than 20 million secret messages last year.
French investigators involved
60,000 participants used the elaborately encrypted chat service because it was said that the technology was difficult to crack. For the raid today, the German investigators had received the data from the French police.
Clan participation still unclear
It is not yet clear whether the suspects are members of a clan. At noon, the public prosecutor will announce further details.
Source: wdr.de
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