Woman 'hid cocaine inside her hair'

DUBAI // A woman with a suspiciously large hairdo was found to be using it to smuggle cocaine into Dubai International Airport, police said today.

Police said that they had arrested NCM, a 25-year-old woman from an unspecified African country on April 4 after receiving a tip off that she was carrying the drugs. She was travelling from Buenos Aires to Nairobi at the time.

Officers became suspicious at the size of her hairdo and asked her about it. She claimed it was due to a type of glue used to fasten her hair extensions. When the officers examined her hair they found 360 grams of cocaine wrapped in plastic bags and taped to her hair.

Police said she had confessed to receiving the drugs from a friend in Argentina and that she had been asked to deliver them to Johannesburg for an undisclosed sum.

In a separate case, DM, a 28-year-old woman also from an unspecified African country, was arrested in the middle of April with 404 grams of heroin in her shoes after officers were tipped off she would be smuggling the drug from Faisalabad to Nairobi. Police said the woman had agreed to transfer the drugs to Malawi in return for 50 sacks of rice.

Both cases have been transferred to the public prosecution.

wissa@thenational.ae