In a national Crime Intelligence driven operation, the SAPS Counter Narcotics team has uncovered a major drug lab in Alexander Drive, in Gillits, KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday night at approximately 20:00.
The team followed up on intelligence of the manufacture of heroin straws which led them to an elite house in the Gillits area, just outside Pinetown.
The nineteen men arrested are all foreign nationals of ages between 18 and 37 years. They are likely to face charges of possession and dealing in drugs. The entire operation, we estimate, has a street value of over R41 million which consists of R21.4 million worth of heroin straws, R4.1 million of mandrax tablets, R15 million of heroin powder and equipment.
The detection of this lab has come just days after the same team uncovered a major drug distribution centre in Kempton Park which was worth R75 million.
According to Lieutenant General Solomon Makgale, “We have no doubt that an operation of this magnitude is the work of a syndicate and we believe that we are making great inroads in bringing these major drug syndicates to its knees.
“While we applaud our Crime Intelligence unit for a job well done, we certainly don’t lose sight of enormous role our communities are playing to complement our efforts to minimise the scourge of drugs and the ill effects it has on our societies.” – South African Police Service
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford admitted during a heated City Council debate Wednesday that he had bought illegal drugs in the past two years, but he firmly refused to step down even after nearly every councilor stood up to ask him to take a leave of absence.
The mayor made the confession under direct questioning by a former ally, Councilor Denzil Minnan-Wong. Ford publicly admitted last week that he smoked crack cocaine last year in a “drunken stupor,” but his comments Wednesday marked the first time he acknowledged having bought illegal drugs.
Ford paused for a long time after Minnan-Wong asked him if he had bought illicit narcotics in the past two years.
Then Ford replied, “Yes I have.”
“I understand the embarrassment that I have caused. I am humiliated by it,” Ford said.
But he then turned defiant, saying he was not an addict of any sort and rebuffing suggestions from council members that he should seek help. He insisted he is a “positive role model for kids who are down and out.”
“I’m most definitely keeping this job,” he said. “I am not leaving here. I’m going to sit here and going to attend every meeting.”
Moments earlier, all but two of the 43 councilors present for the debate voted to accept an open letter asking Ford to step aside.
Although it was a stark demonstration of his political isolation, the vote was symbolic because the City Council does not have the authority to force the mayor from office unless he is convicted of a crime.
“Together we stand to ask you to step aside and take a leave of absence,” Councilor Jaye Robinson said, reading the open letter.
The packed council chamber erupted with applause when Robinson ended her speech, saying “Let’s get on with city business.”
Outside City Hall, hundreds of protesters changed “resign!” And organizers of Toronto’s Santa Claus Parade asked that Ford not walk in the procession this year.
Ford’s refusal to resign has confounded the City Council, where many members agree that his erratic behavior – from public drunkenness to threatening to kill someone in a videotaped tirade – has consumed Toronto’s politics and undermined efforts to tackle other challenges.
But with no clear legal path to force him out, the Council is grasping for ways to shunt the larger-than-life leader aside and govern without him until next year’s municipal elections.
The open letter was separate from a non-binding motion, also being debated Wednesday, that would formally call on Ford to take a leave of absence, apologize to Toronto residents for misleading them and cooperate with police.
Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly, a Ford ally, announced shortly before the debate that he would support the motion, introduced by Minnan-Wong.
“I’m publicly advising the mayor to take some time,” Kelly said.
Minnan-Wong said he would drop another proposal to ask the province of Ontario to pass legislation to remove the mayor from office if he refuses to take a leave. Other councilors had expressed concern that asking the provincial government to intervene would set a dangerous precedent.
Councilor Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother, heckled Minnan-Wong throughout the debate.
One Ford ally, Councilor Giorgio Mammoliti, called the motion a waste of time. “We can’t tell him what to do. Only the electorate can tell him what to do,” he said.
Toronto police said last month they had obtained a long-sought video of Ford apparently smoking from a crack pipe but that it does not constitute evidence to charge him. Toronto Police spokesman Mark Pugash said Ford’s acknowledgement Wednesday that he bought illegal drugs would be passed on to investigators.
News reports of the crack video’s existence first surfaced in May, but it has not been released publicly.
Another proposed motion would curtail Ford’s powers, suspending his authority to appoint and dismiss the deputy mayor and his executive committee, which runs the budget process. It likely won’t be debated until Friday.
Toronto’s mayor already has limited powers compared to the mayors of many large cities in the United States. He is just one voting member in the council and his power stems mostly from his ability, as the only councilor elected by citywide vote, to build consensus and set the agenda. That authority, many council members say, has evaporated in the crack scandal.
Ford, 44, was elected three years ago, riding a backlash from suburbanites who felt alienated by what they deemed Toronto’s downtown-centric, liberal-dominated politics.
Despite his eroding political leverage, Ford promises to seek re-election. He maintains a hardcore of supporters he refers to as “Ford Nation,” who applaud him for abolishing an annual $60 vehicle registration tax, squeezing valuable concessions out of the labor unions and other cost-saving measures.
Councilors have expressed concern that more revelations about the mayor’s will surface and plague city politics.
On Tuesday, a judge agreed to release more documents from a drug case against a friend and occasional driver of the mayor, Alexander Lisi. Previously released documents revealed the mayor’s ties and covert meetings with Lisi.
Police said they obtained the crack video in the course of the investigation against Lisi and a gang. They say they cannot release the video because it is evidence before the court.
Ford was grilled by councilors about his links to a Toronto home where he was photographed with three suspected gang members. A police informant has described the residence as a “crack house” and police have said it relates to the crack video.
“That is not a crack house,” Ford said. “Have you been in that house?”
Councilor Michael Thompson retorted: “I have no interest in being in that house. I am not a crack user.” – AP
Parents are responsible for keeping their children away from criminal activities, the department of community safety said on Sunday.
“Women must also not allow poverty to keep them in abusive environments, which usually leads to their children being sexually abused,” Mpumalanga Community Safety MEC Vusi Shongwe said in a statement.
Shongwe was speaking at a public gathering between residents, the police and other government departments in Barberton on Saturday.
Residents called on Shongwe to strengthen law enforcement to fight crime in the area by bringing in the police’s Tactical Response Team, also called “Amabherethe”.
The residents listed the increasing use of drugs by youth in the area, school pupils loitering during school hours and the rising number of rape and common crimes in the area as some of the problems in the community.
Shongwe said communities should stop promoting crime by buying stolen goods.
“These perpetrators are known in our communities, therefore communities must play a role by informing police and not protect them,” Shongwe said.
The department and the police would embark on a clean-up programme in Barberton.
They would also target non-compliant liquor stores, Shongwe said. – Sapa
Drugs worth millions were found in a suitcase at the OR Tambo International Airport, the Hawks said on Friday.
“Yesterday [Thursday] at around 4pm…the police at the airport and customs searched an unclaimed luggage bag containing 20kg of crystal meth worth R56m,” said Captain Paul Ramaloko.
“When we tried to check who the person was, by that time, the person disappeared.”
No arrests had been made yet.
The bag had come off a flight from Abu Dhabi. – Sapa
Prosecutors formally levied drug-trafficking charges on Tuesday against two young women from Scotland and Ireland who were arrested this month trying to depart Peru with 24 pounds of cocaine in their luggage.
The prosecutor’s office in Callao, the city abutting Lima where its airport is located, also said in a statement Tuesday night that Michaella McCollum Connolly, 20, and Melissa Reid, 19, face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison if convicted.
Their lawyers claim they were coerced into carrying the drugs by criminals who threatened them and their families and had them followed to Peru to ensure they collected the cocaine.
A Peruvian police official says both women insisted on their innocence during questioning. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The two young women spent much of Tuesday in medical checks and preprocessing ahead of an expected transfer to prison to await trial.
Since their Aug. 6 arrest at Lima’s airport as they tried to board a flight for Madrid, the women’s plight has received blanket coverage by British tabloids. The reports have featured photos of both young women in swimsuits, and partying in Ibiza.
Small-time smugglers who plead guilty in Peru usually receive six-year prison sentences and, with good behavior, can be out in two years.
Peru’s penal authority says 1,648 foreigners are currently in its prison on drug-trafficking charges, 31 of them British citizens. – AP
The Obama administration announced plans on Monday to reduce its use of mandatory sentences for drug offences in order to tackle a cycle of poverty and incarceration in overcrowded jails.
In remarks to the American Bar Association, Attorney General Eric Holder was to call minimum jail terms “counterproductive,” according to excerpts from his speech released in advance.
Holder says the United States should remain strict but be smarter about tackling crime.
And he warned that, while the total US population has increased by a third since 1980, the prison population has soared by 800 percent.
The United States accounts for five percent of the world population but nearly a quarter of all people imprisoned, he said.
“Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. However, many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem, rather than alleviate it,” Holder was to say.
And of 219 000 people jailed in federal as opposed to state-run prisons, nearly half were convicted of drug-related offences.
Altogether, inmates in local, state and federal prisons cost the government $80-billion in 2010 alone, he added, saying it was time for reform.
“We can start by fundamentally rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. Some statutes that mandate inflexible sentences — regardless of the facts or conduct at issue in a particular case — reduce the discretion available to prosecutors, judges, and juries,” Holder said.
He added: “They breed disrespect for the system. When applied indiscriminately, they do not serve public safety. They have had a disabling effect on communities. And they are ultimately counterproductive.”
The mandatory minimum sentences were included in the penal code by Congress in 1986 and 1988.
Holder said he hoped Congress would pass new legislation but in the meantime he has mandated a modification of the Justice Department’s charging policies.
Holder said that under the changes certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organisations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offences that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences.
“They now will be charged with offences for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins,” he said, according to a draft of his speech.
In a further effort to ease the prison population, Holder announced a change to allow for early release of elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes and have served significant portions of their sentences.
The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the changes enthusiastically.
“Today, the attorney general is taking crucial steps to tackle our bloated federal mass incarceration crisis, and we are thrilled by these long-awaited developments,” it said in a statement.
“While today’s announcement is an important step toward a fairer justice system, Congress must change the laws that lock up hundreds of thousands of Americans unfairly and unnecessarily,” the ACLU added.
In 2010, President Barack Obama won passage of a law establishing more equality in sentences for convictions for possessing crack and cocaine. They were stiffer for crack, and most of those convicted of this were black.
That law also did away with mandatory minimum sentences for first time crack possession offences. It was the first such minimum sentencing elimination since the 1970s. – iAfrica.com
Two suspected robbers believed to be targeting an alleged home-based marijuana growing operation were killed in a shootout on the first day of legal marijuana in Washington state, authorities said.
The 35-year-old homeowner told detectives he shot the masked intruders Thursday after they broke into his home near Puyallup, Pierce County Sheriff spokesman Ed Troyer said, according Komonews.com. Troyer told the news outlet that the masked men most likely sought to grab the pot and maybe cash.
The Associated Press reported the secluded, luxury home had a security system, a private driveway and that the homeowner had motorcycles, boats and nice cars.
The homeowner and his 9-year-old son were not hurt. The homeowner, whose name was not released, was detained, at least pertaining to an illegal growing operation, Troyer told the wire service. He has since been released.
The marijuana at the home was of large quantity, much more than one would need for medicinal use, Troyer said.
The shooting occurred on the first day of legal marijuana in the state. The law, which voters approved in November, allows those 21 and older to possess an ounce or less of pot.
Backers of the initiative hope the law puts an end to the black market marijuana industry, such as the alleged growing operation where the shooting took place.
At the moment, it is still illegal to buy, sell or grow marijuana. The state’s liquor control board is now tasked with drafting a framework for licensing growers, handlers and retailers. – LA Times
Children as young as 12 are being sold drugs around school premises, Gauteng police commissioner Lt-Gen Mzwandile Petros said on Wednesday.
“I have met with primary school principals in some of our clusters regarding the drug problem. The situation is severe… some have indicated that they are helpless,” he told reporters in Johannesburg.
“If consumption of drugs happens at schools, then it means the sale of these substances is around school premises.”
Petros was giving an overview of Gauteng crime statistics for 2011/2012.
Some school children were working with the police to thwart the drug trade on school grounds, he said.
“This project has been done successfully in areas such as Klerksdorp: we are rolling it out in schools across the province.”
Serious crime such as murder, armed robbery, rape and hijacking had decreased in Gauteng compared with the previous financial year.
However, crimes such as theft out of vehicles, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, drug possession, dealing in drugs, and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs were on the increase.
Police were working hard to make Gauteng citizens feel safe, said Petros.
Rural safety campaigns had been introduced in areas such as Muldersdrift and Midrand. – Sapa
Colorado and Washington became the first US states to legalise the possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use on Tuesday in defiance of federal law.
Amendment 64 supporters were ecstatic at their gathering in Denver Tuesday night when news came down.
“Marijuana prohibition has failed in Colorado and it has failed in all sorts of other places,” Amendment 64 advocacy director Betty Aldworth told CBS4. “I’m so proud and so honored to have worked with this team of people and to live in a state where people recognize marijuana prohibition is a failure and we can do better.”
The amendment allows adults over 21 to possess as much as an ounce of pot. It also allows people to grow as many as six pot plants in secure, private areas.
Supporters believe legalization will generate tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for Colorado.
The approval of the amendment puts Colorado in defiance of federal drug law.
“It’s still against federal law,” Gov. John Hickenlooper told CBS News anchor Scott Pelley about an hour later. “I’m not sure we can make it as legal as the voters would like us to do. But clearly the will of the voters spoke.”
Hickenlooper, who opposed the measure, said it’s “not immediately apparent” how the amendment will hold up against the national law.
Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office released a statement after the measure’s passage, saying the “Department of Justice’s enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged.”
“In enacting the Controlled Substances Act, Congress determined that marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance. We are reviewing the ballot initiative and have no additional comment at this time,” Dorschner said.
State voters rejected recreational pot in 2006, but Aldworth said this measure comes at a time when voters have a different mindset, thanks in part to the burgeoning medical marijuana industry in several areas of the state.
“Amendment 64 is quite different from Amendment 44 in 2006 in that it envisions the regulated model for marijuana sales whereas Amendment 44 only decriminalized for adult use,” she said. “What we know is that Colorado voters have accepted the idea that we can regulate marijuana like alcohol successfully and we can make a safer, healthier and more just Colorado by doing so.”
The measure had the backing of the NAACP, the ACLU and the state public defender’s office, but most major state leaders came out in opposition.
Roger Sherman, the No on 64 campaign director, released a statement just after 9 p.m. on Election Day conceding the race:
“We knew all along this was an uphill battle against a well-funded national movement. We appreciate the efforts of Governor John Hickenlooper, former Governors Bill Owens and Bill Ritter, Attorney General John Suthers, Mayors Michael Hancock and Steve Hogan and countless other sheriffs, county commissioners, district attorneys and local elected officials who joined with the business community and citizens of Colorado to oppose this ill-conceived amendment.
“We can only hope that our concerns and fears about amending the Constitution to make Colorado the first state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana do not come true.”
The states of Oregon and Washington also had pot legalization amendments on the ballot, and at least one of those states — Washington — also approved their measure.
Colorado is already one of 17 states that allow marijuana use by people with certain medical conditions.
Sheryl Cwele, at the time of her crime the Minister of Security's wife
The prison sentences of Sheryl Cwele — former wife of State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele — and her co-accused were increased to 20 years on Monday.
“The effects of their deeds on the community at large far outweigh their personal circumstances and justify a long term of imprisonment,” the Supreme Court of Appeal concluded.
Cwele and Frank Nabolisa were found guilty in May 2011 of drug dealing by the Pietermaritzburg High Court and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment each.
Cwele, 50, appealed to the SCA against her conviction only, while Nabolisa appealed both his conviction and sentence.
Both pleaded not guilty to conspiring to deal in drugs, to procuring a woman, Charmaine Moss, to collect drugs in Turkey, and to procuring another woman, Tessa Beetge, to smuggle cocaine from South America.
Nabolisa had been in custody until now, while Cwele was out on R100,000 bail.
A full bench in an unanimous judgment, said in many similar cases the drug courier or “mule” got caught, while the handler — the real dealer or importer — remained safe in the background to carry on with his or her evil deeds.
SCA President Lex Mpati said in this case it was only through the courage and determination of Beetge’s mother that the real culprits were brought to book.
The SCA judgment held that Cwele and Nabolisa, by being involved in the drug trade, had reconciled themselves to sowing the seeds of destruction, directly and indirectly, in the lives of a number of people, including children.
The SCA held that Nabolisa sent Beetge to South America to collect cocaine and bring it back to South Africa.
“It is the only reasonable inference to be drawn from the totality of the proved facts,” the judge said.
The SCA found it might well be that Cwele played a lesser role in the whole enterprise, but as a qualified nurse she must have known the dangers inherent in the use of drugs.
“Yet she was a willing partner in the commission of the crime, who befriended and preyed on vulnerable women in furtherance of the criminal enterprise.”
The judge said on the facts the “inference was irresistible (compelling)” that Cwele must have known that Beetge was being asked to ferry cocaine to South Africa.
The SCA held the trial court was correct in treating Cwele and Nabolisa equally. The court dismissed their appeals against their convictions.
It found the 12-year prison sentence imposed on each of them by the trial court disturbingly inappropriate. The high court’s sentences were replaced with a sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment for each of them. – Sapa
First reviews of Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s novel for adults on Thursday praised its Dickensian scope and social message, but warned the gritty, even obscene tale was a far cry from Hogwarts.
Shortly before the release of the hotly awaited “The Casual Vacancy”, several reviewers said they were taken aback to read grimy scenes of sex and drugs, but added the author’s most vivid writing was on the familiar ground of adolescence.
“I had just read a passage written by the world’s favourite children’s author in which a teenager is raped by her mother’s heroin dealer, a man who may well be the father of the girl’s own three-year-old stepbrother, although it’s hard to know for sure when the mum concerned is a prostitute,” wrote Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph.
She added that the novel, a story of poverty and politics in an English village — of which a million copies have been pre-ordered — was “sometimes funny, often startlingly well observed, and full of cruelty and despair”.
But the Mirror tabloid labelled it “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Filth”, warning the author famed for her stories of young wizards was “sure to face stern criticism for featuring the C-word and F-word hundreds of times”.
Set in the picturesque fictional village of Pagford in southwest England, the black comedy deals with the fight to fill a slot on the parish council after the incumbent’s sudden death, and hinges on the fate of a squalid housing estate.
Kept closely under wraps until publication, it hits bookshops on Thursday and is expected to be Britain’s top-selling fiction title this year.
In the Independent, Boyd Tonkin called it a “song of freedom” after Rowling’s seven children’s books, which made her the world’s first billionaire author.
While decrying the novel’s “clunkily satirical set-pieces”, he said it “picks up passion, verve and even magic” when dealing with its teenage characters.
“All the social and hormonal turbulence that the later Potter volumes had to veil in the euphemisms of fantasy appear in plain sight here,” he wrote. “The novel builds into a vividly melodramatic climax with these kids at its heart.”
But the Guardian’s reviewer Theo Tait labelled the edgier scenes “superficial excitements”, saying the novel created a sense of “slight anti-climax” despite its “richly peopled, densely imagined world”.
And writing in The Times, Erica Wagner said the book was founded on “the idea of the novel as a force for social good” but could be “a tiny bit dull”.
For the Telegraph’s reviewer, however, a top concern was the risk of the book falling into the wrong hands.
“In the coming days, along with thousands of parents around the world,” she wrote, “I will have to do something that offends our best instincts: I will try to stop my children reading a book.” – AFP
About 65 percent of the country’s murders resulted from arguments fuelled by substance abuse, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa announced on Thursday.
Unveiling the 2011/12 crime statistics, Mthethwa said the country’s murder rate had dropped by 3.1 percent since the previous reporting period.
“Murder is one of the most reliable trends of crime statistics,” Mthethwa said.
In 2004/5 more than 18,000 people were murdered. Less than 16,000 murders were reported in 2011/12.
“This translates to a 27.6 percent reduction in murders over an eight year period,” said Mthethwa.
He said research had shown that most murders were committed after an interpersonal argument, stimulated by heavy drinking and drug abuse.
Murder is one of seven categories grouped together as contact crimes.
The other categories are attempted murder, sexual offences, assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm, common assault, aggravated robbery and common robbery.
“The crimes in question account for 29,9 percent of South Africa’s serious crimes; such crimes involve physical contact (usually violent and coercive in nature) between perpetrators and their victims.”
All provinces except the Free State, Limpopo and the Western Cape experienced a decrease in contact crimes.
“In the 2010/11 financial year, contact crime decreased by 6.9 percent and for the financial year under review, we recorded a decrease in 3.5 percent.” – Sapa
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In a national Crime Intelligence driven operation, the SAPS Counter Narcotics team has uncovered a major drug lab in Alexander Drive, in Gillits, KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday night at approximately 20:00.
