The driver of a refrigerated truck in which customs officers found nearly 500 kg of marijuana at the Kulata border checkpoint has been detained for 72 hours. A request will go to the court to hold him in custody, the Customs Sofia regional directorate said.

Customs officers stopped the truck on the morning of Tuesday, 10 November, as it came into Bulgaria from Greece.

How it began: Customs officers found 497.9 kg of marijuana in a refrigerated truck at Kulata

The tractor unit and its refrigerated semi-trailer have Bulgarian plates. Officers from the anti-drug trafficking unit chose the truck for a check. The driver showed papers for sausages and peppers loaded in Spain and bound for recipients in Bulgaria.

An X-ray showed a suspicious area at the front of the trailer, so officers searched it by hand. After they unloaded the sausages and peppers, they found a partition wall that split the trailer into two zones with different temperatures.

The second zone held 22 boxes wrapped in clear tape. Inside were 445 vacuum-sealed bags of dried green plant material, weighing 497.90 kg gross.

A field drug test showed it was cannabis, or marijuana. Customs officers say it is a high-risk narcotic.