Two Dutch arrested in record drug bust at Sziget Festival in Budapest

Budapest, Hungary – Two Dutch nationals suspected of drug-trafficking were arrested over the week-end at the Sziget music festival in Budapest.

Local media have described it as one of the biggest drug busts in the history of the world-famous festival, as local police confiscated over 450 bottles of narcotics, 130 grams of cannabis and a kilogram of ecstasy pills from the two suspects, both Dutch nationals aged 21 and 22 years old.

According to early estimates, the drugs have a street value of around 15,000 euros.

The two drug-dealers were arrested when security guards of the Sziget Festival alerted local authorities after noticing a constant and never-ending flow of visitors coming in and out of their tent.

According to local media 444.hu, the two men had even printed hundreds of sheets listing prices for the various drugs they were offering to festival-goers.

The two young men could face a penalty of eight years in prison if found guilty of drug-trafficking.

The jail sentence can however go up to 20 years in certain circumstances, and even life imprisonment if large quantities are involved, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Drug consumption in Hungary is also a criminal offense and is punishable by up to 2 years in prison.

Held on the Óbudai-sziget island on the Danube river in Budapest, Sziget is one of the largest musical festivals in Europe, attracting every year over half a million people from all parts of Hungary and Europe.

The Sziget Festival was first held in 1993, designed in the spirit of the Woodstock Festival – marketing itself as the “Eurowoodstock”, not unlike the Pol’and’Rock Festival, that took place earlier this month in Poland, better known as the “Polish Woodstock”.

This year’s lineup in Budapest included Ed Sheeran, Florence + The Machine, Tom Odell, Franz Ferdinand, Macklemore, the Foo Fighters and many more prominent bands and musicians.