Nine nabbed in huge hashish ring

Over two years ago, masterminds behind an international drug ring thought they had begun quietly slipping $860 million of hashish into Canada through ports in Halifax, Montreal and Toronto. Some reports noted enough drugs were involved — 43.3 tonnes — to supply the entire population of Canada a number of times over. But this week, nine culprits learned the jig was up when police arrested eight men in the Montreal area and a ninth in Gatineau, Que. The men face charges of conspiracy, importing and possession of cannabis resin (hash) for the purpose of trafficking, the RCMP said. It wasn’t clear Thursday how much of the massive cache of hash went through the Port of Halifax. Some of the hash was stashed in containers marked as containing denim jeans or different kinds of food. “Some were going to Halifax. Altogether there were nine containers,” Cpl. Luc Thibault of Montreal RCMP said in an interview Thursday. The Montreal Mounties, in charge of Project Celsius, as the sting operation has become known, said all the drugs were destined for that city and then were to be distributed elsewhere. Investigators were in control of monitoring and/or intercepting the hash as it made its way through Halifax and then onto trucks that had come from Montreal, Thibault said. The same monitoring and/or interception happened at other ports and locations as well, he said. It all started in 2009 when investigators received information from Canada Border Services Agency agents who had discovered hashish in containers in Halifax and Montreal, the RCMP told the CBC on Thursday. After authorities noted a pattern, either drugs were removed and empty containers continued on their way to waiting trucks, or the drugs’ journey was monitored and “controlled,” Thibault said. Elsewhere, the drug operation centred on Belgium, Italy, Pakistan and the United States, the RCMP said. The drugs were believed to have been readied for the trip in Pakistan, the CBC reported. Police there said that when the drugs arrived in Montreal, a fax would be sent to a hotel in that city. Then the container retrieval plan would start. Police also said they found that the containers arriving in Montreal were handled differently from those in other locations, pointing to the possible involvement of port workers, news reports said. Thibault said the Mounties seized all the drugs.