A pioneering sentence condemns a ‘snakehead’ for trafficking marijuana gardeners

The situation left investigators stumped. One of the gardeners crowded into the plantation that had just been dismantled did not even know that people on the street had been wearing masks for months, because of Covid. He had been locked in that room for more than a year, with mattresses on the floor, one against the other, pots scattered on tables, bottles with yellow liquid, cardboard as a bed with duvets thrown on top. Pseudorooms without windows, with clothes hanging on lines and full of dirt. Three years after that police operation, a pioneering ruling by the Barcelona Court has sentenced the man to 15 and a half years in prison. snake headWanqi H., for human trafficking for the purpose of criminal exploitation, in addition to clandestine immigration, drug trafficking, criminal group and document falsification. Police experts assure that this is one of the first times that a trafficking crime has been applied to gardeners exploited in plantations.

The investigation began with the complaint of a woman, who knew Wanqi H. She herself turned to the acquaintance snake headas human traffickers are known in China. He traveled with eight other people and his mother paid the 180,000 yuan (23,000 euros). He left Hong Kong, he believes he ended up in Greece and, once in Barcelona, ​​the man offered him to work for him, attracting other people for 600 euros, either as a prostitute, or in marijuana plantations. Originally from the Fujian region, she assured that in her town, “everyone is helped by Wanqi H.”. He went to the police in 2019 for the first time, he was given the status of a protected witness, and in the end he went three times to expand his testimony, essential to dismantle the criminal group.

Shortly after, his brother appeared before the Mossos, but with a different status: that of victim. The man explained that he also contacted Wanqi H. to leave China. “In my town, it is the only one that can bring people, it is a mafia and it has a monopoly,” he declared. He traveled to Europe, with the ruse of a 10-day commercial visa, to attend an alleged fair in Lithuania, for the company Fuzhou Yangsan Food Co LTD. Neither the fair nor the company existed. Due to his transfer, in which he coincided with “10 or 13 other people”, he incurred a debt of 85,000 yuan (11,000 euros). First he slept two nights in Beijing, with an intermediate stopover, he couldn’t say where because he didn’t know anything about Europe, until he arrived at El Prat airport in Barcelona. There he was picked up by Wanqi H., who claimed that he took his passport and plane ticket, and took him directly to a “marijuana factory.” “But I didn’t want to,” he insisted, nor was he informed that he should work as a gardener.

Wanqi H.’s condition, before seeing his sister in Barcelona, ​​was to first be employed in the marijuana plantation, to which she took him. The victim remained “three or four hours there,” complaining. Wanqi H. tried to convince him by offering him 2,000 euros for the job, but he continued to refuse, while he watched other people water the plants. No one spoke a word to him in all that time, until finally Wanqi H. got him out of there and he was able to contact his sister, who in turn notified his wife, who had originally paid the debt owed to Wanqi H’s wife. in China. The victim, however, did not recover his passport until much later, with several pages torn out, completely useless, as he explained. In his statement, he insisted that he never wanted to know anything about marijuana, which is prohibited in his country, with severe prison sentences.

The sentence includes the testimony of three more protected witnesses, considered victims by the Prosecutor’s Office, for whom the suspect could never be convicted because they did not appear at the criminal trial. The first explained in a brief statement before the mossosassisted by an NGO, who remained “more than a year” without leaving an industrial warehouse where marijuana was manufactured, in Abrera (Barcelona). The principle is almost always the same: his “precarious economic situation” led him to contact people who helped him enter Spain illegally, and with whom he contracted a debt of 14,000 euros. He landed in Madrid, where they took all his documentation and told him that he was going to work on a tea plantation. But in reality he ended up in a marijuana plantation, where he lived for a year, “watering the plants, making food, and only receiving visits from the members of the network.” He came out when the Mossos kicked the door under the ship, in May 2021.

A similar story to another person, who explained that he contracted a debt of 10,000 euros, after contacting a snake head to travel to Spain. They gave him a tourist visa, and he went to Santa Coloma de Gramenet to ask for a job. A man offered him a job taking care of plants, with room and board included, for 2,500 euros a month. They always gave him to understand that they were tea plantations, until he found himself locked up in a marijuana factory in Centelles. He remained “six months in unsanitary and poor conditions” until the police showed up. Practically identical to what a third gardener said, who thought he would work for 50 euros a day in a legal business, and found himself imprisoned in a plantation. indoor in Sant Andreu de la Barca.

The sentence condemns Wanqi H. to eight years in prison for the first of the four testimonies, the only one he testified in the judicial process. But the Mossos sub-inspector, head of the central human trafficking unit, Lluís Moreno, insists that it could have been 24 more years in prison in total if the rest of the gardeners had continued in the judicial process. “Those who do it are authentic empowered heroes and heroines,” he reflects, in general, about trafficking victims. He admits that they are people “very pressured and intimidated, in a closed community.” The complaint represents a risk for them, for their families of origin, where they cannot protect them, in addition to social death, because many times their own compatriots turn their backs on them. In this case, he celebrates that at least the testimony of the three more possible victims is included in the sentence.

The leader of the organization, Wanqi H., has also been convicted of trafficking in marijuana, for falsification of documents, for criminal group, for clandestine immigration and for fraud of electrical fluid in the four industrial warehouses that the Mossos d’Esquadra dismantled. Their investigation confirmed that the group sent the marijuana, by parcel service, to Glasgow.

Wanqi H. is in prison, and his defense has appealed the sentence, which is not yet final. The Mossos have no idea where the other three alleged victims of the network may be now. “They disappeared,” explains Sub-Inspector Moreno. For a time, they put a warning in the internal systems, in case someone located them in another plantation. But so far, they have not heard anything from them. “If I have to bet, I think they are in the hands of another organization, trying to pay the debt incurred,” laments the researcher.