{"id":12129,"date":"2014-06-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-08T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/echonews.sites.caxton.co.za\/12129\/the-drug-highway\/"},"modified":"2014-06-10T11:25:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T09:25:05","slug":"the-drug-highway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/news-headlines\/2014\/06\/09\/the-drug-highway\/","title":{"rendered":"Ephedrine hidden in spare wheel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Connecting drug factories in neighbouring Mozambique with their target market in South Africa, travelling through Gauteng all the way down to the Western Cape.<\/p>\n

The Hawks arrested two Mozambican nationals in possession of 3,5kg of ephedrine on Tuesday. The men were stopped at the Shell Ultra City close to Middelburg after police acted on a tip-off.<\/p>\n

Their car, a Ford Fiesta was searched and the drugs were found hidden inside the spare wheel. It is said to be worth around a quarter of a million Rand.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
The ephedrine was hidden away in a spare tyre.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Inacio Salvador da Silva (32) who lives in Plein Street Johannesburg and Rafall Osvaldo Antonio Nhassengo (38) who lives in Maputo are both Mozambican nationals. They appeared in the Middelburg court on Wednesday and face charges of dealing in drugs and contravening the medicines and related substances act for having in their possession medicine or a scheduled substance.<\/p>\n

Bail was denied and the duo will appear in court again next week for their formal bail application.<\/p>\n

\"Kol.<\/a>
Kol. Leonard Hlathi points to where drug smugglers built in a false compartment to transport methamphetamine over the Mozambican border.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2022 Millions of Rand of drugs have been confiscated on the N4 near Middelburg over the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

Three Mozambican nationals were arrested with 10 kg methamphetamine (Tik) hidden in a Toyota Landcruiser VX they were traveling in.<\/p>\n

\"Kol.<\/a>
Kol. Leonard Hlathi shows some of the kilogrammes of methamphetamine recovered after a Toyota Landcruiser was stopped on the N4 highway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A South African man, Keagan Dexter Murphy, was arrested after methamphetamine were found hidden in a fake built-in compartment in the Ford Territory he was driving from Maputo to Gauteng. The drugs were estimated to be worth R12 million.<\/p>\n

\"Keagen<\/a>
Keagen Dexter Murphy was stopped on the N4 and drugs worth millions were found in his vehicle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The N4 is called the gateway or main tourist artery to the Lowveld. Unfortunately it seems it is also one of the main arteries for the drug trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":12172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Jana Boshoff","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2885,2],"tags":[1550,1447,9,1093,1549,1548,972],"class_list":["post-12129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-crime-news","category-news-headlines","tag-busted","tag-cars","tag-local-crime-news","tag-drugs","tag-ephedrine","tag-n4-highway","tag-police"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Crime News"},"tag_labels":["Busted","cars","Crime","drugs","Ephedrine","N4 Highway","police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}