Excitement in Belgium about an ecstasy laboratory that was discovered on a former military site. At first it was said that the laboratory was located on a base where NATO nuclear weapons are stored. The investigation is ongoing.
Ecstasy has been produced in a clandestine drug laboratory near a Belgian military base where NATO nuclear weapons are also stored. The public prosecutor of the province of Limburg said on Tuesday that the local police discovered the laboratory for the production of the synthetic drug “at” the Kleine-Brogel base in northern Belgium last Wednesday. It was then excavated with the support of experts from the Federal Police, the Criminological Institute and civil protection.
The Belgian Ministry of Defense later corrected the information provided by the public prosecutor. The police operation took place on a “former military site near the base”. The laboratory was not on the base. The head of the Belgian aviation unit, Colonel Koen Vanheste, stressed in the Belgian media that the base was in no way involved in the case. “We are blown away and have never been contacted by the judicial authorities.”
Ecstasy lab: Two suspects arrested
According to a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office, two suspects were arrested but later released. The spokesman left it open whether investigations were being carried out against her. The raw material for ecstasy, MDMA, was produced in the laboratory, it said.
The base is used by the US Air Force in addition to the Belgian Air Force. In 2019, Belgian MP Samuel Cogolati from the Green party Ecolo reported that “ten to 20” nuclear warheads were stored there for NATO. According to the findings of the investigators, the province of Limburg, which borders the Netherlands, is often used by criminals for drug storage and drug laboratories.
Source used: “Het Nieuwsblad”
