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One of the two defendants is led to his seat at the beginning of the trial in the Heilbronn Regional Court
Photo: Christoph Schmidt / dpa
After a huge crystal meth find, two drug dealers in Heilbronn have been sentenced to several years in prison. According to the conviction of the district court, they had ordered the methamphetamine abroad and had been caught red-handed over in Sinsheim in northern Baden-Württemberg last October.
After the 200-kilogram drug find, the police had spoken of the largest find of crystal meth ever found in Germany. Investigators estimated the street value of the drugs at 15 to 20 million euros.
The drugs from Mexico had been hidden in a 24-ton hydraulic press that had been specially converted to transport the high-purity methamphetamine. The press came to Antwerp by ship before being taken by truck from Belgium to Germany.
The main defendant from Heilbronn, who was 34 years old at the time of his arrest, must be imprisoned for eight years and nine months after the verdict. The one year younger accomplice from the Sinsheim area was sentenced to a prison sentence of two years and eight months, as a court spokesman confirmed.
Thus, the court remained with the sentences below the demands of the prosecution, which had demanded eleven years for one defendant and seven years for the other. The defense had pleaded for a milder sentence for the main defendant, who had already been convicted several times for drug offenses, and a suspended sentence for his accomplice.
kfr/dpa