On the evening of 27 February 2008, Follo police raided a cannabis nursery in Flatby in Enebakk, arresting five people, four of them of Vietnamese background, and seizing around 400 plants.[1] Two evenings later police raided a house in Kirkebygda, also in Enebakk, finding about 400 large plants ready for harvest plus some 100 empty pots, and arrested a man in his forties who was of Vietnamese origin and held Norwegian citizenship.[2]
The raids belonged to a wave of indoor plantations across eastern Norway: police had uncovered more than 30 nurseries, charged nearly 60 people with cultivation, and remanded more than 40 in custody, straining remand capacity.[1][3] About 10,000 plants had been seized, with an estimated street value near 150 million kroner, and Kripos, the national criminal investigation service, was coordinating the districts ahead of a 5 March meeting on centralizing the investigation.[3]
The nurseries followed a pattern: rented detached houses with covered windows, advanced irrigation, lights burning around the clock on stolen electricity, and a resident “gardener” tending the plants, whom police believed may have been smuggled into the country.[3]
