An Italian judge has ordered 49 suspected Latin American gang members to stand trial for allegedly using dogs to smuggle cocaine into the country.<\/p>\n
A vet in Mexico forced large dogs to swallow drug packages before they were flown into Milan, police say.<\/p>\n
On arrival, they were killed and dismembered to retrieve the cocaine in a case which has outraged animal rights activists.<\/p>\n
The Ecuadorean, Peruvian and Salvadoran nationals will face trial in Italy.<\/p>\n
The suspected gang members, between 19 and 37 years old, are thought to be part of youth drug gangs known as “pandillas”.<\/p>\n
The gangs go under the names Trebol, Neta, Latin King Luzbel and Latin King Chicago, according to the investigative judge Fabrizio D’Arcangelo.<\/p>\n
Mr D’Arcangelo told reporters the armed gangs were involved in several crimes in and around Milan.<\/p>\n
The drug trafficking operation was first uncovered in March, when 75 suspects were arrested.<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Italian judge has ordered 49 suspected Latin American gang members to stand trial for allegedly using dogs to smuggle cocaine into the country. A vet in Mexico forced large dogs to swallow drug packages before they were flown into Milan, police say. On arrival, they were killed and dismembered to retrieve the cocaine in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9003"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9003"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}