If surprising was the discovery of more than 30 kilos of hashish in a bundle when the agents were searching a marijuana plantation, more disconcerting was the result of the analysis of another 4 kilos of what appeared to be part of the same merchandise of cannabis resin that the civil guards found it in a bag.
This substance, distributed in several pieces of brown color, earthy appearance and wrapped in plastic, was reminiscent of the typical format of hashish pills. The drug test, however, came back negative for cannabis. The agents applied the multi-drug test and it returned a positive for MDMA (or ecstasy), a synthetic drug that has nothing to do with the cannabis composition. “It is not conclusive in the opinion of the instructors,” they pointed out in the proceedings of the case. The agents had seized in that investigation 41 marijuana plants and 30 kilos of hashish from an uninhabited house in the Murcian district of Torreagüera on May 30.
The result of the analysis of the 4 kilos of what looked like hashish and turned out to be MDMA was one of the arguments used by the criminal lawyer Jorge Novella to defend the only person arrested in the case for an alleged crime of drug trafficking and production. Tarik B., a 27-year-old Moroccan, was accused of being the watchman and the person who maintained the crop. At first, the Investigating Court number 6 of Murcia sent him to provisional detention, but after the appeal was filed, the order was reformed on June 13, adopting provisional release instead.
“Relevant is the fact of the deficient analysis that is made of the seized substance, where it can be seen that from a number of pills, with the appearance of hashish, the result is negative, even the agents state that it is positive for MDMA, at their discretion. , inconclusive (it is clear that no type of controllable substance is found, much less MDMA in view of the appearance it presents)”, stated the lawyer Novella in his defense brief.
An unbearable smell of ‘marie’
The investigation began at the beginning of last May, after continuous complaints from neighbors for “an unbearable smell of marijuana that emanated from a house, supposedly abandoned and that had been occupied, on Miravete de Torreagüera street. Residents mentioned the difficulty of residing in adjoining houses due to this strong odor.
In addition, on May 4, the Civil Guards received a report from the Murcia Local Police in which the agents stated that they had gone to the house on several occasions due to calls from the neighbors. Through the cracks in the doors, the police detected the intense smell of marijuana. With this information, the civil guards launched the investigations to find out if the building housed a ‘maría’ plantation.
The caretaker’s arrest
During the surveillance carried out by the civil guards, they were able to verify that there was a noise from fans, commonly used in marijuana plantations for the conservation and development of the plants. The electricity company confirmed the existence of an illegal connection, with a fraud of 7,000 euros. They also perceived the strong smell of drugs that the neighbors complained about.
In addition, they identified a person, Tarik B., arriving in a vehicle, opening the property on two occasions and carrying a bottle of phytosanitary products on one of them, such as those that would later be found in the search of the house.
“The pills are a brown substance with a sticker of a smoking male with the inscription ‘Bob Marley'”
On May 25, Tarik was arrested as an alleged watchman and caretaker of the marijuana plantation and the entry and search of the house was carried out. In the performance, 41 ‘María’ plants were intervened in an advanced state of flowering, with a large number of buds and almost ready for harvesting; seven air conditioners; 38 lamps and 10 fans. The agents also found a bundle containing 285 pills of what appeared to be hashish weighing just over 100 grams each (almost 30 kilos of substance).
“The pills are made of a brown, earthy-looking substance, wrapped in plastic, with a sticker showing a colored man smoking and a lion’s head with the inscription ‘Bob Marley’,” according to the proceedings. The civil guards analyzed one of the pieces with a drug detector and the substance tested positive for cannabis. They also found a bag inside a chimney in the house, which contained 45 pills weighing 95 grams each, with a total weight of 4 kilos. In this case, and although the appearance was the same as the previous pieces, the result of the analysis was negative for drugs.
The agents stated in the statement that, although both the color and the earthy appearance, wrapped in plastic, in the typical format of hashish pills and a texture reminiscent of it, its smell did not correspond to substances derived from cannabis. «That when it is negative for cannabis, a second multidrug test is carried out. That, although it yields a positive result for MDMA, it is not conclusive in the opinion of the instructors,” concluded one of the reports.
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