A drone carrying illegal drugs into a prison in Belgium has crashed, with local authorities saying the crash was caused by the drone being overloaded.
The crash took place on Thursday morning at the Forest Prison in the south of the EU capital of Brussels. Police seized both the drone and the illegal drugs, but they did not share which illegal drugs the drone had been attempting to transport into the prison.
“This drone was sent this Thursday morning to supply detainees with narcotics, it was supposed to land in the courtyard, but fortunately it did not arrive safely and could be intercepted by the staff before delivery,” a prison source told Sudpresse.
“This problem is really worrying, you can imagine what will happen the day a drone carrying a firearm arrives at its destination,” the source added.
Denis Goeman, spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, said that an investigation into the matter has begun.
” The drone was seized along with the narcotics for analysis by the scientific laboratory of the federal police. The investigation is actively continuing in order to identify the pilot of the drone,” he said.
Belgium: 43 Arrests After Rioters Stone Police, Fire Shots from Stolen Service Weapon https://t.co/2AYbcBW8ak
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 13, 2020
Drones have been used in several other countries as a means of smuggling drugs and other items into prisons in recent years.
In December of 2015, guards at Her Majesty’s Prison Oakwood near Wolverhampton, England, discovered a drone that also had been carrying drugs, USB sticks, and a mobile phone charger. Between 2014 and 2016, British prisons reported at least 33 instances of drones being used to smuggle in goods.
The United States has also seen similar cases, including an incident at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 2015 which saw a drone deliver drugs, hacksaw blades, a mobile phone, cigarettes, glue, and cigars.
Smuggled phones have also been used by radical Islamic extremist inmates in French prisons to communicate with terrorist groups like the Islamic State while behind bars. Two inmates who used smuggled phones to plot a terror attack upon their release were discovered in Fresnes prison in 2017.
Belgium Faces ‘Wave of Jihadism’ as Radical Islam Spreads in Prison Population https://t.co/QxFOXIjmh1
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 1, 2018
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