An envelope containing some 20 grams of cannabis grass mailed to a Qawra apartment had put the police on the trail of a suspected trafficker, ultimately leading to a drugs cache inside the man’s bedroom.

The whole sequence of events was described in court as the compilation of evidence against 25-year old Mark Anthony Vassallo from Qawra continued.

The man had been arraigned on May 1 and had been remanded in custody after pleading not guilty to the aggravated possession of drugs in circumstances which indicated that they were not for his personal use.

As proceedings continued, various members of the Drugs Squad testified as to how on April 30, at around 7.30am, they had been dispatched to execute a search warrant at an apartment in Qawra.

A woman, later identified as the mother of the accused, let them in and called her two children who were out at the time.

The accused was the first to turn up, at first denying that he had anything to do with the drug mailed to that address.

However, upon being informed that all the members of the household, including his mother, would be taken under arrest, the young man had relented and admitted that the drug was his, leading the search party to a bedroom.

“This is not your room! Take me to your room,” one sharp officer had soon pointed out, after noting that a car key inside a drawer did not match the make of the vehicle driven by the suspect. This key belonged to an Audi model whereas the suspect was known to drive a BMW, the court was told.

It was at that stage that the young man led the officers to another bedroom and without further prompting handed over two one-kilo bags of cannabis resin and a yellow bag containing some 92 self-seal sachets.

Inside the room the police also discovered some €4,500 in cash, some £150, a sizable bag of white powder, 14 pieces of cannabis resin wrapped in cling film and other drug paraphernalia.

The search continued in another apartment nearby where other signs of daily consumption of cannabis, including two cannabis joints in the bedroom, were visible.

During the, a court-appointed scientific expert testified that after analysing the suspicious substances he could certify the presence of cannabis resin, cannabis grass and MDMA (ecstasy). However, the white powder contained no trace of natural or synthetic drugs, the expert concluded.

The case continues.  Inspector Justine Grech prosecuted. Lawyers Franco Debono and Mario Mifsud were defence counsel.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.