On the night of 17 January 2019, military police tactical and intelligence units raided a house on Rua João Sapuruna in Fortim, Ceará, acting on a tip that the property stored illicit goods.[1] In one bedroom officers found 62 bales of hashish that filled the room with a strong smell; the load weighed almost two tonnes and had come from Morocco.[1]
Alexandre Antônio Ribeiro Guerra, 41, was in the house and did not resist, and a follow-up search at a second address in Fortim turned up Rúben Adriano Morgado Pereira, 27.[1] Both men are Portuguese and had no criminal record in Ceará.[1] Police also seized two pick-up trucks, more than a thousand euros in cash, mobile phones and electronic devices.[1]
A transatlantic route
The pair were taken to the anti-drug division in Fortaleza and booked for drug trafficking and criminal association.[1] The division’s delegate, Ismael Araújo, said it was premature to say how the drug reached Ceará, but described the suspected route: from North Africa near the Iberian peninsula across the ocean, transferred to a smaller boat that landed at a pier in Fortim.[1] He said the load was meant for distribution to Brazil’s Northeast, North and South, and that no hashish seizure of that size had been recorded before in Brazil.[1]
InSight Crime later recalled the Fortim seizure as the previous comparable Brazilian hashish haul before the record 2021 interceptions.[2]
