Court hears dispute over bottles used to transport amphetamine base

Police rejected claims that bottles used to transport amphetamine base in the Dettifoss case could hold only about 10 litres, mbl.is reports. The dispute arose during the main hearing at Reykjavík District Court.

Sævar Hilmarsson, Kastriot Pepaj and two crew members are accused of arranging the import of 14,100 millilitres of amphetamine base in March and April. The substance had a concentration of 47 to 48 per cent and was allegedly intended for profitable distribution in Iceland.

According to the indictment, the substance was placed in four Absolut vodka bottles inside a bag aboard the container ship Dettifoss, which travelled from Bremerhaven in Germany to Iceland, arriving early on 13 April.

One of the crew members previously described three of the bottles as three-litre bottles and the fourth as approximately one litre, which would give them a combined capacity of about 10 litres.

During the hearing, photographs showed that three of the bottles were marked as having a capacity of 4.5 litres. A police officer involved in the investigation said he had only seen the bottles wrapped in plastic inside a sports bag when they arrived in Iceland. He had not removed them from the bag or photographed them himself.

Asked whether he had reason to doubt the crew member’s description of the bottle sizes, the officer said there would have been no reason to replace the bottles during the investigation. He said he trusted the police central investigation department to carry out its work.

“We are not sloshing amphetamine base around in a car park,” the officer said.

Defence lawyer Stefán Karl Kristjánsson has previously argued that it was difficult to see how 14 litres could fit in containers the crew members described as holding 10 litres. The officer rejected that premise, saying: “These were not 10-litre containers.”

However, the crew member testified on Wednesday that he was not certain about the size of the bottles and that his description of three large bottles and one smaller bottle was only a guess.

Both crew members also testified that they had believed they were to transport seven litres of the substance between countries. They said they were shocked when they received the shipment in Germany and saw that the amount was significantly larger.

The hearing also examined mobile phone data. Police believe one phone was linked to the Signal account Cloud. The phone was found at Sævar Hilmarsson’s home during a search.

The phone data indicated that the device was at Sævar’s home for most of the time. The only occasion on which it was recorded as travelling was also when Sævar was travelling.