More than 80kg of drugs destroyed |26 September 2016

More than 80kg of drugs were destroyed over the weekend.

The 79.779kg of cannabis herbal material and 3.954kg of cannabis were burnt

at the Seychelles Hospital’s incinerator in the presence of members of the judiciary criminal justice stakeholders committee.

They included the judiciary, attorney general, National Drugs Enforcement Agency (NDEA), prison authorities and the police.

Cases related to the drugs have either ended in a sentence, acquittal or the defendants have exhausted their right of appeal.

Regarding the Charita drug case all the lawyers agreed that the exhibit could be destroyed – 79kg of herbal material along with other substances.

The Registrar of the Supreme Court Julianna Esticot said the drug-destroying exercise was a necessary one.

“Once the judiciary hears cases and sentences or acquits whoever has been arrested, those drugs remain as exhibits and we have no further use of them. The law says they have to be destroyed. And with all these drugs having accumulated in our stores we are now simply carrying out the legal process of destroying them,” she said.

She added that before burning the drugs there are many procedures that must be respected.

“The officers from the police laboratory must come to court in the presence of the Registrar who is in charge of the exhibit in court; they will test the drugs to make sure that it is the drug that is in the container along with sealing the bags. And today they came to make sure if the seal has not been broken or tampered with,” She added.

Interestingly, the NDEA also brought some drugs to be destroyed that weren’t linked to court cases. The majority of the drugs were said to have been found by anti-drug agencies without any arrest made. But those drugs were not destroyed due to the fact that the NDEA did not follow the proper procedure for the drugs to be destroyed.

Verifying the consignment of drugs before burning