Police hot on the heels of drug syndicates have seized 100 000 Mandrax tablets with a street value of R3,5-million and arrested a Belhar man they suspect of being a close underling of a top crime boss.

Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said police had acted on a tip-off.

The swoop on a house in Elsies River on Monday followed protests by Cape Flats communities against drug peddlers and came after three arrests on Friday in Montana where drugs, including crystal methamphetamine, or tik, and illegal firearms were seized.

Nqakula said the arrests so far were linked to one of 32 drug kingpins under surveillance.

“We know who he is, his modus operandi and we’ll have him arrested pretty soon. All the arrests will lead to more later.

We are withholding names because we’re entering a sensitive phase of our investigations and we want to arrest as many people as possible.”

Premier Ebrahim Rasool has promised that the top three drug lords in the Western Cape will be behind bars by the end of the month.

Nqakula said the scale of drug trafficking in the province was difficult to estimate because at times it was a only a few people who ran syndicates.

“That is why we are going after the high-flyers… it will go a long way in doing away with their foot soldiers,” Nqakula said.

He appealed to communities to help the police apprehend the druglords.

Police spokesperson Riaan Pool said the Elsies River raid was the culmination of a long investigation in which detectives in Cape Town and Gauteng had co-operated.

The drugs had been found in boxes in a van, but “we can’t say more because we don’t want to jeopardise the investigation”.

This article was originally published on page 3 of Cape Times on June 22, 2004

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>