Dozens sentenced to prison in Belgium’s largest ever drug smuggling trial: “Your Honor, I played, I lost.”

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A Belgian court jailed dozens of people on Tuesday in the largest drug trial ever, sentencing the ringleaders to 17 years behind bars.

More than 120 defendants from Belgium, Albania, Colombia and North Africa were accused of taking part in a multinational cocaine and cannabis trafficking enterprise after investigators cracked encrypted messaging apps. According to the Brussels TimesIt is the largest criminal trial in the history of Belgium.

The case put the role of Belgium in the spotlight Europe’s gateway for drugs.

About twenty defendants were led in handcuffs to a courtroom at the former headquarters of the NATO military alliance in Brussels.

They sat in the dock facing a row of police officers as the judges read out the long list of verdicts. Others released on bail pending trial sat in court to await their fate.

The first group to be convicted included Algerian Abdelwahab Guerni, one of the alleged leaders, who was jailed for 17 years.

Albanian national Eridan Munoz Guerrero, another suspected leader, was given a 14-year term.

Munoz Guerrero, accused of running several cocaine laboratories in Belgium, had admitted his guilt at the start of the trial, telling the court: “Your honor, I played, I lost.”

The human trafficking operation – active from 2017 to the end of 2022 – involved numerous criminal gangs and was dismantled following police raids in Belgium, Germany and Italy.

Prosecutors had demanded prison terms of up to 20 years for a number of suspects.

They said drugs were transported in containers from South America and Morocco and smuggled through ports in Belgium, particularly the giant port of Antwerp, as well as the The NetherlandsGermany and France before being sold throughout Europe. Customs 116 tons of cocaine seized in the port of Antwerp in 2023, a record for the second year in a row.

The case was based in part on evidence that came to light after investigators cracked the secret Sky ECC and EncroChat apps through which the gangs communicated.

By breaking into the messaging tools, police said they could gain insight into the unsupervised planning and execution of drug smuggling operations.

The sentences were handed down about three months after police announced the verdict on Friday removal of a large network transporting Latin American cocaine by boat to Europe in an international operation involving 50 arrests in eight countries. Around that same time,

Authorities in Paraguay announced the largest cocaine seizure in the country’s history after officials were surprised to discover more than Four tonnes of the drug were hidden in a load of sugar on the way to Belgium.

A blow to the drug smugglers or a ‘publicity stunt’?

Belgian authorities have portrayed the trial as the latest blow to drug smuggling gangs.

But some defense lawyers labeled it a “publicity stunt” and accused prosecutors of bundling unrelated cases into one high-profile trial.

“People were artificially connected to each other when they had no connection,” Guerni’s lawyer Gilles Vanderbeck told AFP before the sentences were handed down.

Prosecutors insist there was a ‘structure and hierarchy’ between the various criminal groups involved and that there were clear illegal commercial links.

Some suspects were acquitted, while dozens of others received prison sentences ranging from a few months to more than ten years.

The verdict was initially expected on September 2, but was postponed after an objection from one of the defendants.