Russia: Drug-Addicted Plantation 'Slaves' Found Farming Cannabis in Far East

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Moscow Times

Tuesday 13 Mar 2012

Police in the far eastern region of Primorye, near the Sea of Japan, have dismantled a gang of druglords who allegedly forced 20 people, mostly drug addicts and alcoholics, to work as slaves on a cannabis plantation, threatening them with beatings and forbidding them to contact outsiders.

The plantation was operated by a "paramilitary unit" using "intelligence and counterintelligence" systems, RIA-Novosti reported on Tuesday. Police uncovered stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, as well as night vision goggles, binoculars and radios.

"Investigators established that the '?nterprising drug dealers' were squatting in abandoned housing facilities in the Pervomaiskoye settlement of the Khankaisky district. They brought local residents there and, threatening physical violence, forced them to work on plantations," police said in a statement.

If the "slaves" refused to work, they were beaten; there was no way for them to escape or contact relatives, investigators said.

Police discovered four caches with 80 sacks of dried marijuana, weighing 400 kilograms (880 pounds) in all. "This is 200,000 onetime doses," investigators said. The drug crop was reportedly harvested for local buyers, in the Primorye and Khabarovsk regions.

Five suspected overseers as well as the alleged organizer have been detained. They are between the ages of 27 and 35, and "all have been previously convicted of theft, robbery, armed robbery and drug crimes," police said.

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/blogs/434079/post/drug-addicted-plantation-slaves-found-farming-cannabis-in-far-east/454633.html#ixzz1pBCizu9g
The Moscow Times

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