A laboratory manufacturing the illegal narcotic ecstasy (MDMA) was discovered on a Belgian NATO base that houses nuclear weapons, with two people arrested in the case, according to prosecutors.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office of the Belgian province of Limburg stated that the two people arrested were not employees of the NATO military base and were released after being questioned.
“On Wednesday, June 22, 2022, the local police of the Kempen discovered a synthetic drugs laboratory, located on the military domain (NATO) in Peer,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, French newspaper Le Figaro reports.
The prosecutor’s office added that the drugs lab “was dismantled by the specialized services of the Federal Police, in collaboration with the National Institute of Criminology (NICC) and the Civil Protection.”
According to Le Figaro, the location of the base is an area popular with drug traffickers as it lies between Antwerp and the German Ruhr area.
The Kleine-Brogel base is part of a number of NATO bases across Europe that house nuclear weapons that belong to the United States armed forces, with Belgian MP Samuel Cogolati claiming as many as 10 to 20 warheads were stored at the base in 2019.
The case comes just days after another NATO-related affair in which hundreds of British troops were denied being deployed to a NATO mission after allegations of orgies taking place at the Merville Barracks in Colchester, Essex.
NATO leaders, meanwhile, met this week in Madrid for a summit as the Russian invasion and war in Ukraine continue with fighting largely taking place in the east of the country.
Nuclear weapons remain in the background of the conflict but fears still exist that such weapons could be deployed as rhetoric from some in Russia has been tense.
Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director at the Royal United Services Institute in London told Canadian broadcaster CBC that the chances of Russia deploying nuclear weapons were low “as long as Russia feels it’s winning.”
