Steroid ring sent drugs to U.S. troops
Italians say mail-order outfit busted
Parcels `returned to sender’ from Iraq
VICTOR L. SIMPSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROME—Italian police seized 215,000 doses of prohibited substances as they smashed a ring that supplied steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to customers around the world, including American soldiers in Iraq, an official said yesterday.
The U.S. military in Iraq had no immediate comment, but the popularity of steroid abuse has long been discussed as American troops and contractors in Iraq work out in gyms set up in bases and even in the mirrored halls of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.
Joe Donahue, program director for the Vietnam Vets of America Foundation, who spent 16 months in Iraq — often lifting weights in the Green Zone gyms — said steroids were on offer for those who wanted them.
“I had them offered to me by an Iraqi guy who sure as hell looked like he was using them,” Donahue said. “There were guys I’m pretty sure were juicing, but not a lot of them.”’
He said a pair of Iraqi bodybuilders known casually as “the large brothers” sold steroids and other supplements in the Green Zone building where he worked. “I can say with no equivocation, I was offered steroids,” Donahue said.
Private security contractors told AP steroid use also is a problem among their employees because the drugs are as easy to buy in Iraq as cans of soda.
The Italian investigation began after a post office in Trieste in northeastern Italy reported that U.S. officials in Iraq returned hundreds of packets of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs because they were improperly addressed.
Mario Bo, head of the Trieste police department’s criminal division, said Slovenians Sasco Tacs, 30, and Vesna Milosevic, 20, were arrested last month after a raid on a Trieste apartment and charged with trafficking in prohibited substances.
The drugs had been ordered over the Internet, and police said steroids were also sent to customers in Europe, North America and Australia. They estimated the ring may have had as many as 1,000 customers.
Synthetic derivatives of testosterone, anabolic steroids are thought to enhance aggressiveness. Their use can also lead to the development of breasts in men, baldness and cancer, as well as major depression, mania and other mood problems.
Beefed up U.S. soldiers are a common sight in Iraq, where many work out using makeshift gym equipment near their sleeping quarters or in elaborate gyms at large bases such as in Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
Inside one of Saddam’s former palaces on the sprawling Tikrit base, a mirror-walled gym is routinely packed with heaving soldiers pumping iron on bench presses, arm curls and other equipment.
Some soldiers have questioned how their more rippling fellow soldiers could have built up such bulk while in a war zone, suggesting steroid use may have been taking place. But they had no independent confirmation to back up their suspicions.
Troops receive mail at inexpensive domestic U.S. postal rates, allowing soldiers to order almost anything online.
Bo said Trieste police were ready to co-operate in any international investigation, but they had not been approached by U.S. authorities.