Global Ganja Report

The French navy announced Sept. 12 that it had made a record cannabis seizure in the Mediterranean sea after intercepting a ship carrying 20 tons, with an estimated value of 50 million euros. "To the best of our knowledge it is the biggest seizure by the French state in the Mediterranean," vice-admiral Yves Joly told reporters in Toulon. The Tanzania-flagged Luna-S was boarded by French naval forces in international waters between Italy and Algeria. The eight-member crew, tentatively identified as Syrians, set the cannabis on fire as the French patrol ship approached, and dramatic photos were released of smoke rising from the deck. The Luna-S had left Morocco days earlier. Tanzanian authorities say they are investigating the ship, which was registered to a company in the Marshall Islands. 

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota resigned Aug. 25 in the midst of a diplomatic scandal concerning a Bolivian opposition figure who accused the Evo Morales government of narco-corruption. Bolivian senator Roger Pinto had been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in La Paz for more than a year after he was charged with corruption-related crimes. He claimed the charges agaist him were retaliation for blowing the whistle on a Bolivian cabinet minister's meetings with a Brazilian drug lord. Pinto on Aug. 25 turned up in Brasília, having secretly fled Bolivia in a Brazilian diplomatic car, protected by a detachment of Brazilian soldiers.  According to Brazilian media, President Dilma Rousseff's government did not know of the operation and considered it a "disaster." Pinto on Sept. 3 said that he would decline requests to testify before Brazil's congress on the affair. (EFE, Sept. 3; BBC News, Aug. 26; WSJ, Aug. 25)

The Strategy Page reports that on Aug. 23 an anti-Iran demonstration was held in the provincial capital of western Afghanistan's Herat province. Local Afghans accused Iranian diplomats based at the local consulate of bribing officials, and operating as a "criminal gang." Somebody is certainly bribing Afghan police and border officials in the province bordering Iran; Iranian security forces have seized 214 tons of opium and heroin at the Afghan border in the last five months, and made hundreds of arrests. A western opium route linking Afghanistan to global markets through Iran appears to be opening, adding to the traditional southern route through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan and northern route through Central Asia to Russia.

Authorities in Hong Kong are boasting that the city's long-reigning criminal gangs, the notorious Triads, are finally crushed following an operation coordinated with police forces in Macau and mainland China's Guangdong province, in which more than 14,000 were arrested and 2,500 properties raided—including discos, massage parlours and nightclubs. Police confiscated HK$39.3  million (US$5 million) worth of illicit goods, including drugs, contraband cigarettes, pornography and weapons. Leading figures in the powerful Sun Yee On and 14K triads are said to be among the detained. 

Mexico's most notorious kingpin, Rafael Caro Quintero, was released Aug. 9 from Puente Grande federal prison in Jalisco where he had been incarcerated for the past 28 years. He left the facility at dawn, several hours before the release order was made public. The First Appellate Tribunal in Guadalajara found in March that Caro Quintero was improperly tried for the 1985 torture-killing of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, and that charges should have been brought at the state rather than federal level. Federal prosecutors immediately appealed to the Supreme Justice Court of the Nation, which refused to rescind the lower court's decision. The Third Circuit Tribunal, also in Guadalajara, has now followed through by issuing Caro Quintero an amparo—a judicial order barring any federal action against him.

Colombia’s National Police announced the seizure of three tons of marijuana in the southwest of the country on July 28. Units of the traffic and transport police discovered the packets of herb in a truck that was stopped at a checkpoint on a road between the towns of Villarrica and Candelaria, respectively in the departments of Cauca and Valle del Cauca. The bust took place on the same route where police this year have carried out operations resulting in major seizures. When inspecting the vehicle the police discovered 47 packages of plastic fiber, all containing marijuana with a total weight of three tons.

More than 160 civil society organizations representing hundreds of thousands of citizens in Mexico, Central America and the United States, sent an open letter to the OAS General Assembly meeting in the Guatemalan city of Antigua this week,  calling for alternatives to the "war on drugs" that guarantee respect for human rights. "Our organizations have documented an alarming increase in violence and human rights violations. While we recognize that transnational crime and drug-trafficking play a role in this violence, we call on our governments to acknowledge that failed security policies that have militarized citizen security have only exacerbated the problem, and are directly contributing to increased human suffering in the region," the letter states.

Police in the border city of Mexicali on Feb. 27 announced the discovery of a powerful improvised cannon used to hurl packets of marijuana across the border fence into California. Police told Mexico's Televisa network the device consisted of a plastic pipe and a metal tank that used compressed air from the engine of an old car. The apparatus fired cannabis-packed cylinders weighing up to 13 kilos, police said. It was confiscated after US officers informed Mexican police that they had found a large number of drug packages that appeared to have been fired over the border. (AP, Feb. 27)