Oslo men jailed for large cannabis shipment from Danish ferry
Two men from Oslo have been sentenced to prison after being arrested with almost 20 kilograms of cannabis on a motorway in Norway. The drugs had arrived by ferry from Hirtshals in Denmark.
Oslo men jailed for large cannabis shipment from Danish ferry
Vestfold District Court has passed sentence against two men from Oslo who were stopped on E18 at Lierbakkene with 19.6 kilograms of cannabis in their car. The drugs had been handed over to them by a Danish lorry driver at a petrol station in Larvik one night in September 2021.
Police had received information from Danish colleagues that a professional driver was planning to bring a large quantity of drugs into Norway on the Superspeed ferry from Hirtshals. Norwegian investigators therefore decided to launch a covert surveillance operation at the harbour to identify those who were to receive the shipment.
According to the ruling, which Østlands-Posten has reported, plainclothes officers observed the Danish driver as he drove off the ferry and parked at an Esso petrol station on Elveveien. Shortly afterwards, two men arrived in a car. One briefly spoke with the driver, after which the other reversed behind the lorry. The driver then moved a box from the trailer into the boot of the car.
As the two men drove towards E18 and Oslo, undercover officers followed them. At Lierbakkene, uniformed patrols blocked the road. Officers found a cardboard box wrapped in cellophane in the boot, and inside the bags was cannabis.
During a search of the passenger's flat, police found a further 1.2 kilograms of cannabis in a small loft space. They also found two pistols and a significant quantity of ammunition, even though the man did not have a licence to possess weapons.
The passenger, now in his sixties, explained in court that he was ill and short of money when a former colleague offered him a couple of thousand kroner to fetch a "cutting machine" in Larvik. The driver, now in his fifties, claimed that he believed the box contained a toy castle for the other man's daughter.
The judges found the explanations untrustworthy, unclear and evasive. The court was convinced that both men knew exactly what the box contained.
The passenger was sentenced to two years and six months' unconditional imprisonment for possession of large quantities of drugs and illegal firearms. The driver must serve two years and one month for receiving and transporting the substances. The sentences were reduced due to lengthy case processing time – four years and nine months passed before the case could come to trial, partly because the passenger was seriously ill and the main hearing had to be postponed several times.
The Danish lorry driver was not stopped by Norwegian police during the operation but was later arrested and convicted in Denmark for smuggling significant quantities of cannabis into Norway.
Source: Google News DK — Crime (da)