MAASTRICHT - For processing and preparing hemp, the police judge in Maastricht yesterday sentenced nine women from Kerkrade, Brunssum, Landgraaf and Heerlen, among other places, to sixty hours of community service, twenty hours of which were suspended. Two others were also given suspended prison sentences of two and one week respectively. The eleven women from Parkstad each stated that they had read an advertisement in a supermarket looking for people who wanted to earn extra money. They had to report to the parking lot of a hotel in Heerlen on June 19, 2008. What exactly they had to do, most of the women said they did not know. "I thought we were going to pick asparagus," said one. Another woman had an inkling, but "it could also have been packing work. However, it was about cutting marijuana buds.
The eleven female 'weed cutters' were taken to a shed on the Breulingstraat in Maastricht in a blinded van. Remarkably, some of the participants did carry scissors. "Certainly not for cutting hair," prosecutor Geuns told the mostly contrite women. "And for cutting asparagus, it was not the time." The women ended up not earning a dime from their work, because after a good hour the police raided the shed, following a tip-off from an observant colleague on a mountain bike. Gone were nice side earnings.