MOSCOW, March 5 — Russia yesterday jailed a former school chemistry teacher who ran a drugs lab in his attic producing large quantities of synthetic narcotics.
The 52-year-old, who has a chemistry degree and had worked as a secondary school teacher, was sentenced to 11 years in a harsh-regime penal colony in Siberia for producing and selling large amounts of synthetic drugs, TASS state news agency reported.
The case recalled the hit US television series Breaking Bad where a high school chemistry teacher uses his skills to make very pure crystal meth.
The Russian, named by media as Eduard Prokopyev, had also trained as a laboratory technician.
He set up his own production facility in the attic of a country cottage and bought equipment and chemicals online, Irkutsk regional court said in a statement.
The laboratory functioned for around a year before being the FSB security service discovered it, confiscating 20kg of ready-to-sell drugs and the ingredients to make twice as much, TASS reported.
FSB video footage showed the attic equipped with tubes, electronic monitors and flasks as well as boxes and containers of chemicals.
The drugs were distributed to clients via an elaborate system of hiding places, Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported.
Russian television showed the shaven-headed former teacher looking grave in the defendant’s cage in court as he was sentenced. — AFP
