Drug crime
Drug labs have been a plague in our country for years, especially in the Limburg and Antwerp Kempen. For the second time in five years, deaths have occurred in an illegal lab.
A man called the emergency services on Wednesday morning to report that three people were lying unconscious in a building on Poederleeseweg in Lille. When the emergency services arrived on the scene, no help could help the three. A fourth man was resuscitated at the scene.
The man who called the emergency services also had to be taken to hospital, as did a neighbor who quickly arrived on the scene. It remains to be seen what role the man who called the emergency services plays in the whole story. Local residents say he had to come and work on the electricity. It has been established that a working drug laboratory was found in the building where synthetic drugs were made. Nothing is yet known about the identities of the victims, and the exact cause of death is also not yet known. More than likely, the three were overcome by the toxic fumes released during the making of the drugs. The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office has appointed an investigating judge for “the production of psychotropic substances in association with death”.
“The judicial investigation will now have to reveal which drugs were made there and what exactly happened to the victims,” said Kato Belmans, spokeswoman for the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office.
The owner of the warehouse told Gazet van Antwerpen on Wednesday that the tenants of the warehouse had only had a key to the building since mid-March. The contract with the tenant – a Dutchman – would be signed this week. If that is correct, it would mean that the lab had only recently been put into use.
It is not the first time that deaths have occurred in an illegal drug lab in our country. On January 29, 2019, the police discovered three young men from the Netherlands in a company warehouse in Hechtel-Eksel after an anonymous call to the emergency services. The three died because they had made the drugs in a poorly ventilated room where they also slept on mattresses. They died from inhaling toxic substances. Something similar probably happened in Poederlee. This means that to date, six deaths have occurred in our country in labs where synthetic drugs are made.
36 labo’s
The presence of drug labs has been a persistent problem at the border with the Netherlands for years. In 2023, 36 drug labs were closed down across the country. The vast majority of them are in the Antwerp Kempen and Limburg, close to the border with the Netherlands. The production of synthetic drugs is still largely in the hands of Dutch crime gangs. According to the annual report of the Antwerp federal police, various types of synthetic drugs were made in those labs in 2023, including amphetamines but also the super-addictive crystal meth.
What was new in 2023 was the discovery of a mephedrone lab (in Zoersel) and a clephedrone lab (in Olen). Both products are cheap substitutes for amphetamines and ecstasy. The now infamous ‘zombie drug’ Flakka is also a related synthetic drug that is made in labs.
In both the provinces of Antwerp and Limburg, the police and public prosecutor’s office have organized information sessions for residents in recent years about how to recognize drug waste from labs and which signals indicate the presence of a drug lab in their region. The information sessions already yielded results because several drug labs were already found after tips from local residents.
