Investigators have seized more than 1.2 tons of cannabis with a street value of €12 million ($13.7 million) at the port of Hamburg and arrested eight suspects in Poland, customs, prosecutors and police said on Thursday.
Six alleged dealers are now in pre-trial detention, they said.
Two of the suspects are alleged drug dealers from the Diepholz district in the German state of Lower Saxony. Officers assume the two took on logistical tasks.
The German-Polish group is suspected of smuggling the drugs by sea from Thailand to Europe. The goods are said to have arrived in Hamburg hidden in containers carrying building materials.
In May, investigators said they identified a suspicious container. They covertly seized around 400 kilograms of cannabis and continued to monitor the container. During delivery in the Polish city of Szczecin, which is close to the German border, officers arrested four suspects in a warehouse - including a German national.
But the group is said to have continued its drug trafficking. In the same month, authorities seized another container with around 800 kilograms of cannabis in Hamburg. The container returned to Poland without the illegal cargo, this time to the city of Poznań. There, officers arrested four more alleged members of the group.
