Police claimed they smashed the biggest methamphetamine lab ever uncovered in the Southern Hemisphere after raiding a factory Tuesday in Fiji's capital and seizing drugs and enough chemicals to make US$540 million worth of the party drug "ice."
The raids on three warehouses on Suva's outskirts underscored recent warnings by Australia and New Zealand that South Pacific islands could become havens for international organized crime if they don't boost policing, end corruption and bolster their economies.
The illegal drugs were headed for markets in Australia, New Zealand, US and Europe, Fiji police commissioner Andrew Hughes said.
Seven people, including four Asians and three Fijians, were arrested and being questioned by police, Hughes said. They may appear in court Thursday, he said. Their identities and the nationalities of the non-Fijians were not disclosed.
Fiji's parliament is debating tougher drug laws that would increase sentences for serious drug offenses from a maximum of 20 years to life in prison, and increase fines that can be imposed to up to F$1 million (US$540,000).
Hughes said the laboratory, on an industrial estate, was set up to produce the party drug methamphetamine, known as "ice," in what he called the largest such laboratory ever found in the hemisphere.
Dozens of officers involved in the raids wore special chemical resistant overalls as they searched the buildings.
"This is a frightening example of transnational organized crime elements using Fiji as a staging ground for their illegal activities," Hughes told reporters. "Increasingly we are seeing these elements coming to Fiji and joining up with local organized criminal groups."
Some 46 police and customs officers found drugs "bubbling away" in a complex Hughes said was stacked with drums of chemicals and equipment.
An initial assessment of the chemicals found in the warehouses estimated there was enough to produce 1,000kg of crystal methamphetamine, he said.
The estimated value of the seizure -- F$1 billion (US$540 million) -- equated to the small amount of methamphetamine that police discovered plus the amount that could have been produced with the chemicals found during the raid.
Hughes said the laboratory had the capacity to produce 500kg of the drug each week.
The drug-producing operation was detected by a joint Fiji customs and police transnational crime unit established 14 months ago. They waited until Wednesday to raid the operation because it only just started producing the drugs, Hughes said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS