Man high on marijuana sent to prison for mailing asbestos 52 times to embassies

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Savas Avan took large amounts of cannabis which caused a drug induced psychosis. During his psychotic episode, Savas believed he had discovered that asbestos was fire resistant, meaning, the material could not catch on fire or burn.

Savas believed that he had to let the world know about his discovery. During a police interview, he said that the “fabric’s good for firefighters” and “you can make blankets to help people in fires”. He said that he “wanted every country to know about it, because every country has fires”.

One day, Savas went to Australia Post carrying a bag with 16 envelopes and each envelope contained a zip-lock bag with asbestos inside. He paid $116.20 in postage and sent them to various embassies around Australia. A few days later, he did it again but this time with 38 parcels and paid $322.85 in postage. In total he mailed 52 packages containing asbestos.

Many of the embassies received the asbestos, however, luckily, none of them opened the zip-lock bag as the package contained various notes which said, “Asbestos sheets doesn’t burn * Must wear mask + gloves 4 dust pressed in cement” or “Asbestos dust pressed with cement must wear mask + gloves”.

The embassies were shut down for hours at a time and the staff members were inspected by authorities for exposure to asbestos. Nobody was harmed and the police recovered 47 of the 52 packages.

Savas was charged with ‘Causing a dangerous article to be carried by a postal or similar service’ under schedule section 471.13 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

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