A 30-year-old man was sentenced to five years and eleven months in prison for driving a truck with 3.5 tons of marijuana in the locality of Paso de los Libres, Corrientes. The sentence, given to Carlos Javier Betancur, was the first to be handed down through the accusatory system in the Corrientes District. The incident occurred on December 8 of last year, when his vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint on National Route 14, where a drug-sniffing dog and Gendarmerie officers discovered the drug among a load of wood in the semi-trailer destined for the City of Buenos Aires. The accused acknowledged his responsibility for the transport of Cannabis sativa in the presence of prosecutor Aníbal Fabián Martínez and auxiliary prosecutor Mirian Benítez, within the framework of a hybrid hearing. The presiding judge ordered the confiscation of documentation and two seized cell phones, the destruction of the seized drugs, and the preservation of the samples and counter-samples of the analyzed narcotic. Likewise, the magistrate ordered the transfer of the accused to a penitentiary unit near his home in Misiones, in response to a request from the defense and due to the personal circumstances of the accused. At the time of the discovery, a non-intrusive scan was performed that allowed the detection of suspicious bales hidden among the declared load. The preliminary drug test carried out on site was positive for Cannabis sativa, and the driver was detained.
