Since Monday December 18, 125 defendants have been summoned to appear in Brussels for the Sky ECC trial, named after the encrypted mobile telecommunications system used by a vast network of drug traffickers between Latin America and Europe.
3 mins
The network was dismantled during a European raid coordinated among others by the Dutch, French and Belgian police in March 2021 and during searches. This vast network included cannabis and cocaine. The drugs were transported in containers from South America and Morocco respectively, via the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Le Havre, before being sold throughout the European continent. The facts prosecuted relate to the period from January 2017 to November 2022.
Encryption of communications Sky ECC had all the confidence of the criminal networks and this is what caused the fall of this drug trafficking, because the investigators were able to trace all the networks including the one led by Eridan Muñoz Guerrero. “ Madam President, I played, I lost “, declared this 50-year-old Albanian on Monday. “ I take responsibility for what I did, I confirm all my statements to the police “, said the man who is among the dozen people targeted as the alleged “leader” of a criminal organization.
Sprawling folder
But if the latter admitted to having transited the cocaine arriving from Colombia to Belgium to the rest of Europe, he denies having had contact with the more than 120 other accused in this trial, reports our office in Brussels. “ We can see that in this type of criminal organization case, there are several aspects which are often compartmentalized, explains Maître Nathalie Gallant, lawyer for Eridan Muñoz Guerrero. Some of the defendants appearing today do not know each other, but there are points of convergence. And this is what explains this sprawling file. »
But for another defendant’s lawyer, such a mega-trial may be considered artificial. For him, most of the accused have nothing in common other than having used the Sky ECC network. “ If we were to try to manage all the drug trafficking cases at once, trying to find links because there was contact between this or that person, we could quickly find ourselves having numerous trials which could bring together hundreds of people, believes Me Guillaume Lys. But I don’t think this is the right way to deliver justice. The files must be split. We must try to avoid falling into the mysteries of a legal show. »
“ The largest police operation ever undertaken »
In addition to the Sky ECC network, the defendants are also accused of having operated together cocaine processing laboratories discovered on Belgian soil. Some defendants are on the run and will be tried in absentia. Others must appear free. Most have been in preventive detention in Belgium since their arrest.
For the Belgian authorities, this file, nicknamed “Encro”, is one of all superlatives. The 200 searches carried out simultaneously in Belgium on March 9, 2021 following the decoding of Sky ECC were “ the largest police operation ever undertaken » in Belgium, recalled the Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt on the eve of the trial. According to him, there are more than 2,000 accused and nearly 400 cases for the province of Antwerp alone, that of the gigantic Belgian port which has become the first gateway for cocaine into Europe.
Read alsoDrugs: the port of Antwerp, entry point for cocaine into Europe, breaks a new record
(And with AFP)