Despite record cocaine seizures, drug cartels roil Europe
Cocaine is spreading at an alarming rate through Europe, much of it through the world ports of Antwerp in Belgium and Rotterdam in the Netherlands
ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) — Each tiny plastic package was barely the size of a fingernail and weighed all of 0.2 grams. Still, the bags of white powder police seized in a Brussels cellar were yet another indication that a surge in cocaine and crack supply is hitting Europe hard.
And, with it, comes unprecedented drug violence in Belgium and the Netherlands, whose ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam have proven the main gateway for Latin American cocaine cartels into the continent.
In Belgium, the justice minister is forced to live in a safehouse, out of reach of drug gangs. In the Netherlands, killings hit ever more prominent people and there are suspicions that the reason the heir to the Dutch throne had to quit her student life and return home was also linked to threats from drug lords.
“We almost have to see it as a war,” said Aukje de Vries, the Dutch State Secretary for customs.
