Montevideo police raided homes in the Conciliación and Paso Molino neighbourhoods and detained three people who had outstanding arrest warrants, then searched a vehicle.[1] The operation was carried out by the Departmental Anti-Drug Brigade of the Montevideo police headquarters as Operation Damasco, aimed at an organisation making and selling synthetic drugs at retail across the capital.[1] Police said the production side of the group was led by an Ecuadorian man who had entered Uruguay shortly before.[1] Investigators found a tusi kitchen in one of the homes, equipped with everything needed to make the pink drug.[1]
Officers seized 56 grams of marijuana together with the synthetic drugs and the equipment, vehicle, precision scales, five rounds of ammunition, four spent casings and five mobile phones.[1] The marijuana was one item in a haul the ministry listed as 166 tablets and 9.12 grams of MDMA, eight bags of tusi, a jar with 276 grams of pink substance and a bag of ketamine; those synthetic quantities are outside this report’s figures.[1] Teledoce, reporting the ministry’s statement the same day, described the 276 grams as pink cocaine.[2]
The three detainees were handed to prosecutor Llorente of the second-shift drug prosecution office.[1] Judge Islas of the first-shift organised-crime court then convicted L.M.M.I. as the perpetrator of production of prohibited narcotics in real concurrence with dealing in them.[1] The same ruling sentenced D.E.B.F. and M.G.B.R. to two years and two months in prison each, as perpetrators of a continuing offence of supplying prohibited narcotics for payment.[1]
