Cocaine trial of five Britons to resume next month
The trial of five British men facing serious drug charges over a 300-kilogram cocaine shipment seized in June 2022 in the Greek port of Thessaloniki, will resume in mid-November, after it was adjourned on Thursday so that the judicial summons can be translated into English.
Four of the men, aged between 38 and 52, are in pretrial custody. The fifth defendant was arrested on a European warrant in the Netherlands and held in Amsterdam prison before his subsequent release. He had consented to his extradition to Greece, but Dutch judicial authorities rejected the request.
The case file states that the cocaine arrived in Greece in a container carrying a legitimate cargo of bananas from Colombia. The defendants allegedly intended to transport the drugs to central and northern Europe and Australia. This particular ring appears to be linked to another large shipment of cocaine (654 kg) seized in Italy en route to Thessaloniki.
