The Fulda district court sentenced two men to two years and three months in prison each for working on an illegal cannabis plantation.[1] The Fuldaer Zeitung reported the hearing on 29 September 2026. Both were 32, and both admitted at the start that they had worked as gardeners in a business hall in Künzell from the beginning of January 2026 until their arrest in April.[1] Neighbours had smelled cannabis. In the search, police found 703 plants and professional growing equipment.[1]
Both men are from Albania. Through their lawyers they said they had acted out of financial need and had never been paid.[1] Defence lawyer Hans J. Hauschild said his client, a business graduate, had been offered 1,500 euros a month, about three times his pay in Albania, and had assumed cultivation in Germany was allowed. He did not know who owned the plantation.[1] Defence lawyer Christian Celsen said his client, a mechanic with three children and 10,000 euros of debt, was not allowed to leave and saw the windows covered. After one harvest he was told to grow a second, which the police found.[1] Hauschild asked for one year and eight months, suspended. Celsen asked for two years, suspended.[1]
Two police investigators said they had found fingerprints and photographs pointing to other people. The landlord said the people who signed the lease were not the defendants. Police could not identify them.[1] The prosecution asked for two years and three months, and the court agreed. The presiding judge said they were the smallest links, that others made the money, and that releasing them would let them say at home that four months on remand ended the matter. He referred to similar plantations in Neuhof-Hauswurz and Gersfeld-Dalherda. The judgment is not final.[1]
The Osthessen-Zeitung published the arrest announcement on 9 May 2026. Officers arrested two Albanian men, aged 31 and 32, at the end of April, after a public tip about a warehouse plantation in a district of Künzell.[2] Under a search warrant from the Fulda district court they seized several hundred cannabis plants, several thousand pots, heat lamps, fans and other equipment, and a judge ordered both men held on remand. The drugs and equipment could have brought several tens of thousands of euros on the street.[2]