6 ARE INDICTED IN INTERNATIONAL DRUG GANG CASE

NEW YORK - Six alleged members of an international drug gang, including a
man who refused to leave a house where drugs were stashed as the World
Trade Center collapsed two blocks away, have been indicted on narcotics
charges, it was announced Wednesday.

The 38-count indictment included charges of sale of a controlled substance,
possession of a controlled substance, possession of guns and possession of
drug paraphernalia.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said that the Israel-based
gang had mostly sold Ecstasy, a popular club drug that they imported from
Holland, but that it also had trafficked in cocaine, hashish and marijuana.

Five of the men were arrested Tuesday.

The sixth, Zwi Haim Harris, 30, was found by firefighters in an apartment
house two blocks north of the World Trade Center a few hours after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attack, Morgenthau said.

Firefighters had entered the building to make sure it had been evacuated.
They found Harris acting suspiciously and turned him over to police,
Morgenthau said.

Harris took police to a seventh-floor apartment where he said he lived, and
officers noticed marijuana on a living room table, Morgenthau said.

Police obtained a search warrant later and seized more than 3,000 Ecstasy
pills, hashish, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, two guns and numerous rounds
of ammunition.

Assistant District Attorney Daniel Castleman said the apartment's interior
was covered in the gray dust and ash that blanketed lower Manhattan after
the twin towers tumbled.

Authorities had been investigating drug operations from that building for
about a year, Morgenthau said.

On Tuesday, detectives arrested five men and searched nine locations and
seven cars, he said. The gang's leader, Yigal Dobakrov, 37, had 50,000
Ecstasy pills worth $1.25 million, he said.

Dobakarov is an Israeli citizen who has an arrest record there, Morgenthau said.