100m. DOLLARS’ WORTH OF DRUGS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30940, 22 December 1965, Page 13

100m. DOLLARS’ WORTH OF DRUGS

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter— Copyright) NEW YORK, Dec. 21. Six alleged members of a dope-smuggling ring were today ' facing charges of conspiring to import heroin into the United States in what was described as the largest seizure of the drug on record.

A hearing was scheduled for January 23 after the arrest of a United States Army warrant officer and five aliens allegedly connected with a Corsican ring that supplies drugs to the Mafia. A United States Attorney. Mr Robert Morgenthau, said

that 95 kilograms of heroin, worth about 100 million dollars, had been seized from a refrigerator belonging to Chief Warrant Officer Herman Condor at a caravan site in Columbus, Georgia. Another estimate by the United States Bureau of Narcotics, put the value of the heroin, found in 190 halfkilogram packages, at about 118.5 million dollars retail, or 57 million dollars wholesale. From France

Mr Morgenthau said the refrigerator had been shipped to the United States from Orleans, France, where Condor had served until last September. Mr George M. Belk, district supervisor of the narcotics bureau, said that the four French nationals and a Brazilian were to have collected the

heroin last week-end for transfer to the Mafia. He added, however, that a “hitch” had developed and the men had returned to New York without the heroin. Condor, who baa been in the army for 15 years, is married and has two children. Bail for the two Frenchmen and the Brazilian was fixed at 100,000 dollars each. Bail for a Frenchwoman was set at 5000 dollars and another Frenchwoman was released pending the hearing in January. Mr Belk said that his bureau had clues to the identities of other people involved in the United States and expressed the hope that other arrests would be made in France. Condor is being held in Columbus on a bond of 100,000 dollars.