Maputo — The Mozambican police last Thursday arrested five Mexican citizens in Namaacha district, on the border with Eswatini, for the manufacture of illicit drugs.
According to a report in Wednesday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”, two Mozambicans were also detained.
The group packaged the finished drugs into small plastic bags, decorated with pictures of animals. At first sight, they looked like packages of meat, but in reality the bags contained drugs, including heroin.
The five Mexicans told reporters they had arrived in the country two weeks earlier to work in the building industry. They said they knew nothing about the drugs found by the police. But the two Mozambicans said they had been hired by the Mexicans as guards and to look after livestock on the premises.
The head of public relations in the Maputo Provincial Police Command, Juarce Martins, said there was no doubt that the place was a clandestine drugs laboratory. The story told by the Mexicans made no sense since no building industry materials were found. Instead what the police did discover were drums and buckets used to hold chemical substances being transformed into drugs.
All seven members of the group are now being held in the top security prison in the city of Matola. The police say they are undertaking further investigations to track down the true owners of the laboratory.
A source in the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) told reporters that the drug factory was discovered because local residents had complained of the noxious smells issuing from it.
Source: Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique