Nine suspects who were arrested on Friday in a legal action against an Albanian-Bulgarian drug network and were placed under arrest, appeared before the Brussels council chamber on Thursday.  

He has extended the pre-trial detention for seven of them by a month. The two others have requested and were granted an extension until next Tuesday. 

At the end of 2021, the Halle-Vilvoorde public prosecutor's office opened a file on a criminal organization involved in international drug trafficking based on decrypted SKY ECC communication.  

After a thorough investigation, the federal judicial police of Halle-Vilvoorde succeeded in identifying an Albanian-Bulgarian gang operating from Meise.  

The gang used vehicles equipped with hidden compartments to transport drugs coming from the Netherlands, after storage at various locations in Belgium, to the United Kingdom. On Friday, with the help of various federal and local police forces, the investigators were able to intercept two international drug shipments, in Aalst and Ypres. 

Twelve house searches were also carried out in Halle-Vilvoorde (Meise, Grimbergen, Diegem and Wezembeek-Oppem), East Flanders (Sint-Niklaas, Evergem and Aalst) and Brussels (Evere, Sint-Gillis, Auderghem, Sint-Pieters-Woluwe and Schaerbeek).  

Eleven suspects were arrested and twelve firearms, forty kilograms of cocaine, thirteen kilograms of heroin, approximately 100,000 EUR in cash, money counting machines and various vehicles, including several tractors and trailers and light trucks, were seized.  

Of those eleven arrested persons, a total of ten were brought before the investigating judge. He released one on conditions, and placed the nine others under arrest warrant, the HLN reported.