BERLIN: The German police announced that they had seized a record haul of heroin, estimated to be worth $63 million on the street and had arrested two brothers from Syria, one of whom is a German citizen. A third man, a Dutch citizen, was arrested in Belgium.
The police in the northwestern city of Essen found the heroin — 330 kilograms, about 728 pounds, an amount greater than all the heroin seized last year in Germany in a truckload of gherkins and garlic.
Several hundred jars on the truck were filled with heroin instead of pickles, said Marianne Falasch, a spokeswoman for the Federal Criminal Police Office. She said the police delayed announcing the drug haul because investigations were continuing. The German police have for years been on the trail of a Syrian-Iraqi ring suspected of smuggling heroin in vegetable shipments to Western Europe, she said.
