Spanish police said Wednesday they had disbanded an international ring that was giving believers hallucinogens, arrested 18 people and seized more than 60 kilograms of ayahuasca and other mind-altering substances.
Based in the so-called “Epicenter of Inner Evolution”, the group was based in Spain, but also operates in other countries, including France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Romania, Malta, Mexico, Colombia and Turkey. was doing.
Fifteen of the 18 arrests occurred in Madrid, where police said the suspects “promoted and developed commercial rituals involving the use of banned psychotropic substances that endangered the health of participants”. ” he said.
Investigators were tipped off after discovering a business network promoting neo-shamanic rituals online that promised to “improve physical and mental health through the consumption of psychoactive substances”.
The suspects also organized “inner evolution retreats” where they provided prohibited dangerous substances such as ayahuasca, sapobufo toad venom, and the poisonous secretions of cambogia frogs.
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Consumption was monitored by a doctor and his partner posing as medical graduates.
Both were arrested.
The group also had an online platform to sell substances.
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Investigators said the organization was based in the Colombian jungle and used to produce ayahuasca drinks, a powerful hallucinogen made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, which has grown for thousands of years in the Amazon. He was able to access the raw materials.
The drugs were then smuggled into Spain through Madrid’s Barajas Airport, either by human mules or disguised as other products.Packages containing mescaline and ayahuasca were also sent to group members.
During the raid, police seized 24,000 euros ($26,000) in various currencies, one kilogram of mescaline and more than 60 kilograms of ayahuasca.
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The detainees, mostly Latin American or Spanish nationals, have been charged with membership in a criminal organization, public health offences, and some have been charged with human trafficking, smuggling and impersonating professionals.
The group’s leader, considered a spiritual leader by his followers, died during the investigation and was posthumously charged with crimes of a sexual nature and encouraging illegal immigration.
Investigators say such substances are commonly used in new-age rituals involving lights, chants and incense to “induce a dissociative state of consciousness in which certain behaviors are unconsciously adopted.” It is said that he was
“Such psychoactive substances thus become tools used by shamans to recruit and coercively control groups,” a police statement said.
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