Police smash big drug ring
Greek police have arrested 11 people in Athens and Thessaloniki and confiscated 16 kilos of heroin in an operation, they said, that dealt a serious blow to a branch of a wider drug smuggling ring.
They also confiscated guns, ammunition and hand grenades they found hidden in a field next to a house in Koropi, outside Athens, which served as the branch’s headquarters.
An investigation is under way to determine the scale of the ring’s drug smuggling activities.
The suspects, aged between 17 and 56, were nabbed last Sunday after an operation that began eight months ago. Three of those arrested are foreign nationals.
Police are also searching for a 39-year-old foreign man, who is said to be the ring’s mastermind, and a 45-year-old woman.
According to reports, the group imported drugs from Turkey and processed them at a makeshift lab at their headquarters in Koropi, from where they would distribute them around the country, mainly in the wider Thessaloniki region.
Police believe the drugs came via the sea corridors used by migrants to enter Greek from the Turkish coast.
