News, Crimea | He made a big impression with the farmer Bjørn Dahl. Three men ask for NOK 39 million.

Now he, along with four other men aged between 35 and 67, is accused in one of the biggest hashish cases in western Norway.

In total, this is more than 800 kilograms of hashish.

– Not guilty, said Dahl when the conviction was read out in the Hordaland District Court on Monday.

Greater action

The prosecutors believe that Bjørn Dahl and a 46-year-old man from Midthordland must have kept 94 kilograms of hashish.

It was on 4 November 2022 that the police attacked the sheep farmer in Eikelandsosen.

The arrest was part of a larger international police operation.

In March last year, the encrypted online messaging service Sky ECC was shut down. European police gained access to information and managed to decrypt the service, which is said to have been used mainly in connection with drug crime.

Hidden in barrels

Some of the users were in Norway, and on this basis the Western police district launched an undercover investigation.

On Dahl’s farm, kilos of hashish were found in several barrels hidden under stones and mounds of earth.

According to Bjørn Dahl, there is no evidence that he had anything to do with the hash, except that it was on his property.

Earlier in the day, the police had stopped a Lithuanian in a car in Kvinnherad where nine kilograms of hashish were found.

In the following days, several more men were arrested.

800 kilograms of hashish

After a long investigation, the state attorney issued a lawsuit in August of this year. The public prosecutor’s office believes they are all part of a criminal organization.

The distribution of positions between the defendants is different, but in total the case deals with 800 kilos of hashish, or two million user doses.

– None of the defendants are accused of the whole party, stressed the prosecutor, state attorney Herrebrøden, in his opening speech.

According to the indictment, the criminal organization must make a large profit from the hashish conversion.

For three of the defendants, it is stated that it is appropriate to bring shares of up to NOK 39 million into the trial at the end of October.

Dahl who has appeared in BT he is not among them, but he can still count on a long prison sentence if he is found guilty of the charges.

He has previously advocated for the legalization of hashish, but he believes it is unusual to be accused of organized crime.

– I always distanced myself from him, he said in a newspaper interview.

None of the five defendants admit to belonging to a criminal organization, but some have pleaded guilty in part to their involvement in drug activity.

Five weeks have been set aside for a trial in the Hordaland district court, which is administered by district court judge Therese Skodvin.