Spaniard caught in drug raid

By Padraig Collins for Daily Mail Australia

03:40 02 Jul 2024, updated 05:22 02 Jul 2024

An Australian YouTuber has filmed the heartbreaking moment he was forced to flee after the military raided a drug house he was visiting in Colombia.

Anthony Lees, known as Spanian, had been invited by drug traffickers to visit their hideout in Medellin, a city known as the “murder capital of the world” in the 1990s.

Spanian, 37, visits dangerous neighbourhoods in Australia and overseas and shares his adventures with his 775,000 followers.

Footage from his last visit shows him standing in a dilapidated apartment in front of “drug bricks”, guns and ammunition laid out on a bed.

“So that’s pretty much the inside of their business,” he said.

“Tusi is the product we sell,” said one of the alleged drug traffickers, referring to a new form of ketamine, also known as “pink cocaine.”

“In order for us to do this, we have lookouts all over the streets,” said one man, whose face has been blurred.

Tensions became visibly more intense when the room fell silent due to an unexpected visitor outside the apartment.

“Why are they whispering, I’m getting paranoid,” Spanian said.

The fixer who had arranged the visit to the drug house was later seen putting a finger to his lips, using the international abbreviation for “keep quiet”.

Then a voice spoke, saying the word no one would want to hear in a drug den.

” The cops. “

Several people jumped over a back wall, closely followed by Spaniards.

He ran across sheets of fibre cement roofing before fleeing down a staircase and past bricks of drugs that dealers had dropped along the way.

He appeared in a graffiti-strewn alleyway, visibly shaken.

“Because this is crazy, I’m going to turn the camera off for a minute, okay. This is not a joke,” he said.

The Spaniard turned off the camera before resuming the video while he was far from danger.

“If it wasn’t clear what happened, while we were in the middle of all this, bricks of drugs on the bed, guns on the bed, the military came,” he said.

“I saw a soldier. I saw his face. He was looking at me.

“I came home, the guys started running, grabbing bricks of drugs, throwing them everywhere, hitting the roofs.”

Spanian said he was running for his life and feared what would have happened to him if he had been arrested by the military.

“I have no idea and I don’t want to know. But it’s probably the end of Spanish, you know what I mean?” he said.

“I was raided in a drug store in Columbia.”

Spanian had previously spoken with drug traffickers who explained to him how they weighed the contraband and what they used to package it.

They said they were selling cocaine and marijuana and offered Spanian a taste of tusi when he asked what it was.

“No, I’m fine,” he replied, laughing nervously.

“It’s a mixture of different types of pills to make you happy,” his guide explained.

“It’s a very addictive drug, very harmful, (used) by a lot of young people. It was supposed to be the luxury drug used by the rich.

“(But) now the recipe is everywhere, so each (drug trafficker) makes his own.”

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